Taras Bulba

Gogol's fierce romance of the Zaporozhian Cossacks follows the old warrior Taras Bulba and his sons Ostap and Andriy from their studies in Kyiv out onto the steppe, to the Cossack stronghold of the Sich on the Dnipro, and into a savage war against the Poles. The geography is the wide Ukrainian steppe: the academy at Kyiv, the island fastness of the Sich near present Zaporizhzhia, the besieged Polish town of Dubno, and the Dniester cliffs where Taras meets his end.

Ostap

The academy at Kyiv

Chapter 1

Ostap and Andriy come home from the Kyiv academy, one a born fighter, the other softened by learning and dreams, and their father Taras at once resolves to make Cossacks of them by taking them to war. The scholarly city stands for the tamer world the old warrior despises and means to burn out of his boys.

Chapter 1

explicit Taras's sons Ostap and Andriy return from the seminary academy in Kyiv, the real city on the Dnipro that was the centre of learning for the Orthodox Cossack world.

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