“Diary of a Madman” was contemporaneously set in Nikolai Gogol’s Russia of the 1830s and more specifically in the imperial capital of Saint Petersburg. Like other well-known works of Gogol’s, most notably his novel Dead Souls, his play The Government Inspector, and two other short stories of his, “The Overcoat” and “The Nose,” it pokes fun at people’s obsessions with class and social status. Also, similarly to “The Nose,” in which a pompous, status-obsessed character loses his nose and finds it walking around town pretending to a rank higher than his own, “Diary of a Madman” also presents fantastical elements in a realistic setting.

The vast bureaucracy of the civil and military administration and its rigid hierarchical system was a constant source of satire for Gogol. The civil administration was divided into 14 ranks, with each rank having its correspondent in the table of ranks used in the military. For example, the rank of Titular Councillor, Poprishchin’s rank in the civil administration and ninth in the table, corresponded to the rank of Captain in the army. The Kammerjunker with whom Sophie falls in love, meanwhile, is a young man with a position at the court of the emperor, and his rank is fifth in the table.