Contemporary American Literature

Course 2.3
2nd Year American Studies
3rd Year English minor
Spring Semester 2012
Prof.dr. Rodica Mihaila
VLADIMIR NABOKOV (1899-1977)
-Transition from Victorian novel to modernism and from modernism to postmodernis
m:
Biographical details relevant to his work:
-Exilic, cosmopolitan identity anticipating a post-national world (like Rushdie,
Ishiguro, Derek Walcott): Germany, France, England, US, Switzerland
-English novels: Pnin, Lolita (55, 58) Pale Fire 1962(postmodern); Ada (67)=mos
t ambitious
Central theme: man s life in dream or art playing around the edge of reality until
the reality burns in unsubstantial fire (Hassan); no longer the rel. imaginatio
n-reality, but he transfigures reality until total annihilation.
-A fantasist of the absolute
-A self-delighting mind (modernist): the cerebral quality (even in his explorat
ion of bizzare sexuality); prodigious wit and learning (plots tend to become ra
re)
-Use of language: the absurd, parodic patterns of language, play upon words (pos
tmodern); emphasis on sound and shape (repetition, alliteration, juxtaposition,
foreign words=modernist) intensely lyrical, writes ecstatically to transfigure r
eality.
-Naokov revolts against his adversary , "history" , by creating an art which is
against time
Ada or Ardor : A Family Chronicle -1969
explores the incestuous love of a sister and brother who seem mirror ima
ges of each other throughout their 50 years affair. For Van Veen , the brother ,
the world's best fiction becomes the measure of reality. He fills his chronicle
with literary illusions , puns and multiple perspectives to which he has the ke
y. His self-proclaimed magnus opus "The Texture of Time"is also his weapon again
st the passage of time. Through him , Nabokov not only circumvents the political
ly tormented time of his youth and his own precarious existence , but returns to
the prerevolutionary literature of Chateaubriand , Flaubert , Tolstoy and Cheho
v.
His reliance on other literatures connects him to the modernist writers
- Joyce , Eliot
A literary allusion - put to different use ( to obscure the present and
to replace it , not to heighten it ).
Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male (Paris 55; US 58)
-Structure: 1. Foreword by John Ray, 2 parts (central love story ending in posse
ssion; the world of America, L s disappearance, detective plot of pursuit (crime a
nd punishment)), Nabokov s On a Book entitled Lolita anticipates Pale Fire metafict
ion, illusion of the reader
What kind of a novel is Lolita?
-The novel is like a set of essays (answers to questions organized in sections):
ex.
Ch.9 in part 2 (189): L s friends; list of school names (ch.11, part 1)
1.
It juxtaposes a moral and social story (action, plot) and a surface or m
anner or way of telling the story that aestheticizes the events.
2.
A novel tied to extreme individuality of point-of-view, and to subjectiv

ity (no longer the modernist objectivity): A point-of-view novel one of the strong
est examples in lit. (the story is H s version and each detail is enchanted and m
agically captured in his own words); A retrospective narrative of memory=Memory
subjectivizes, poeticizes, transfigures the reality which is banal, coarse, sord
id Am of the 50s
3.
A novel linked to language (aestheticism): descriptions, lists, play/gam
es. An alternative for the novel in a culture dominated by film as main form of
story-telling and entertainment (See parallel with Fitzgerald.)
From realism to modernism and postmodernism
Lolita=a novel of postmodernist transgression
-the conventions of the realistic novel (veridicity forward, concrete realm of evi
dence:a) cars, taxis, accidents and designs of fate (no rationality like in Drei
ser); b)-each part is written like an essay, a piece of evidence to be used in a
trial . Transgressed in a modernist use of language, wit, learning and irony, c
erebreal quality; and a postmodern use of TRANSGRESSION (subvesion of pre-existi
ng norms, breaking the law, central transgression=passion for nymphets), the abs
urd, parody, extreme subjectivity, centrality of GAMES, treatment of ART
GAMES: the game of chess with Gaston=central image of plays and games in the nov
el (postmodernist emphasis of living life according to rules, as man s only freedo
m, no possibility of change)
-rel. bet. playing with words; playing games; toying with person
s
Aestheticism in Lolita compared with Great Gatby
Relation between FITZGERALD and NABOKOV through Lolita:
-born in 1896 and 1899, started publishing at about the same time,
-both juxtapose a moral and social story (action, plot) and a surface or manner
or way of telling the story that aestheticizes the events.
-both make of aestheticism a means of transforming the novel, but N. represents
an exilic identity and the transition to postmodernism, a later moment (died in
1977)
-Aestheticism : with both writers deals with 1.) the Am. Dream (F=corruption, N=
always an illusion, the contrast bet. the New and the Old worlds. Lolita is a co
mic myth, relation bet. place and the heroine suggests that the dream existed on
ly in the imagination of the Europeans. Lolita was no longer a virgin); and 2) w
ith the contrast imagination-reality: Fitz.=Gatsby lost the capacity of wonder;
Nabokov=only the Europeans imagined the dream. There is no dream.
-aestheticism is manifested in different forms: F. transformed the novel into a
visualized film script: locations, stars, costumes, scene to scene progress (the
glamour of Hollywood in 1927 he became a script-writer in H.); N. aestheticism
linked to language: his novel is an alternative for the novel within a culture w
here film is the dominant form of story-telling and entertainment (the novel is
tied to extreme subjectivity of memory) a subjectivity never achieved in film a came
ra looks objectively, records perceptions
-contrast throughout the novel: between the game between Quilty and Humpert with
the games that Humpert plays with Lolita
ART: is also a game, has arbitrary rules (the novel= a board on which )
Link between art-freedom-play. Homo ludens( man at play) his freedom is k
nowing the rules
Conclusion: Transition from Modernism to Postmodernism:
-from stream of consciousness to subjectivity of memory
-from modernist aestheticism through language to a ludic quality (games)
-from mythic synthesis to comic myth (irony, self-irony to parodic transgression
)
-from art as objective, autonomous to art as play; from impersonality to metafic
tion

Postmodernist transgression and subversion of pre-existing cultural norms