Nabokov and his Fiction
New Perspectives

In this 1999 collection, eleven leading scholars offer original essays on Nabokov and his fiction.

Julian W. Connolly (Edited by)

9780521632836, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 August 1999

270 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.57 kg

"The collection presents not only a substantive sampling of diverse areas of critical inquiry at the end of the fourth decade of serious Nabokov scholarship, but offers a home to several of the most interesting individual pieces that have been published in those forty years." Stephen Jan Parker, The Russian Review

Published in 1999 to mark the centenary of Vladimir Nabokov's birth, this volume brings together the work of eleven of the world's foremost Nabokov scholars offering perspectives on the writer and his fiction. Their essays cover a broad range of topics and approaches, from close readings of major texts, including Speak, Memory and Pale Fire, to penetrating discussions of the significant relationship between Nabokov's personal beliefs and experiences and his art. Several of the essays attempt to uncover the artistic principles that underlie the author's literary creations, while others seek to place Nabokov's work in a variety of literary and cultural contexts. Among these essays are a first glimpse at a little-known work, The Tragedy of Mr Morn, as well as a perspective on Nabokov's most famous novel, Lolita. The volume as a whole offers valuable insight into Nabokov scholarship.

1. Nabokov at 100 Julian W. Connolly
Part I. Artistic Strategies and Themes: 2. Setting his myriad faces in his text: Nabokov's authorial presence revisited Gavriel Shapiro
3. 'The gift of imagining facts': Vladimir Nabokov and the art of autobiography Galya Diment
4. The near-tyranny of the author: Pale Fire Maurice Couturier
5. Jewish questions in Nabokov's art and life Maxim D. Shrayer
6. 'The dead are good mixers': notes on individualism in Nabokov's fiction Leona Toker
7. Nabokov's trinity (on the movement of Nabokov's themes) Gennady Barabtarlo
Part II. Literary and Cultural Contexts: 8. 'Imagining other and better ways of looking': Nabokov's response to the legacy of Fedor Dostoevsky Julian W. Connolly
9. Her monster, his nymphet: Nabokov, Mary Shelley, and the specter of sexism Ellen Pifer
10. Vladimir Nabokov and Rupert Brooke D. Barton Johnson
11. From time to eternity: the critique of historicism in Nabokov's Russian writings Alexander Dolinin
12. Poshlust as cultural critique: Nabokov with Adorno and Malraux at the peak of Hitlerism John Burt Foster, Jr.
Selected bibliography of works by Vladimir Nabokov
Selected bibliography of work on Vladimir Nabokov.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK]