The Tale of Enchanted Hunters: Lolita in Victorian Context, in Nabokov Studies, Vol. 10, 2006 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Contextualizing the Medieval Tradition of Courtly Love in Nabokov's Lolita
International Journal of Arabic-English Studies
Using modern terms of morality to evaluate the sexual attitude of Humbert towards Lolita, which constitutes the central subject matter of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (2005), most readers view the novel as erotica, a piece of literature that glamorizes amoral sexuality and rebels against humans' morality. This view feasibly condemns the sexual relationship between a forty-year-old male and a twelve-year-old girl-child nymphet; nevertheless, it overlooks the insistence of the novel's fictitious narrator and editor that the narrative is ethical and heavily loaded with pro morality messages. To resolve this perspectival dichotomy, this article revisits Humbert's love of Lolita contending that the relationship between Humbert and Lolita constitutes a form of courtly love, not rape or pedophilia. Relying on the medieval definition of courtly love, the article argues that Humbert is better viewed as a medieval lover whose love-based sexuality towards Lolita is ennobling and trans...
Aestheticism and Decadence in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
The anachronist, 1999
Lolita is a deceptive text that has been putting readers on trial ever since its publication in 1955 by the ill-famed Olympia Press. 1 It is a fictitious autobiography written by Humbert Humbert, whose conjoined propensities for pedophilia and highbrow aesthetics have persistently baffled critics. Humbert's erudition manifests itself in the numerous literary allusions he scatters throughout his text. They have been noticed by Nabokov's earliest critics, but little has been said about the corresp ondences between them and the patterns they form. 2 The allusions to past writers and their works bolster Humb ert's intention of convincing his readers that his case is not an abnormal one, since it has precedents in the lives of renowned artists. In other words, he is trying to persuade his readers that he truly regrets having ruined Lolita's childhood, but he also wants to make them condone his immorality. The allusions serve particular authorial purposes; they posit the book as texture and intimate themes, thereby revealing the "secret points, the subliminal coordinates by means of which the book is plotted" as Nabokov expresses it in a postscript to the novel, ' On a Book Entitled Lolita ' (p. 334). 3 Nabokov, through Humbert's direct or indirect literary references, also points to the exclusively literary existence of his character. 1 American publishers rejected the book and only the French Olympia Press was willing to publish it. Later, the author in an article entitled "Lo lita and Mr. Girodias" declared that he had not known that most of Olympia Press's production consisted of "obscene novelettes ." (Vladimir Nabokov , Strong Opin ions [New York : McGraw Hill, 1973] p. 271.) As a result, Lolita's reputation was tainted for years. There were many objections on the part of the American reading public when the book was published in 1958 in the United States.
This thesis examines the debate between morality and aesthetics that is outlined by Nabokov in Lolita's afterword. Incorporating a discussion of Lolita's critical history in order to reveal how critics have chosen a single, limited side of the debate, either the moral or aesthetic, this thesis seeks to expose the complexities of the novel where morality and aesthetics intersect. First, the general moral and aesthetic features of Lolita are discussed. Finally, I address the two together, illustrating how Lolita cannot be categorized as immoral, amoral, or didactic. Instead, it is through the juxtaposition of form and content, parody and reality, that the intersection of aesthetics and morality appears, subverting and repudiating the voice of its own narrator and protagonist, evoking sympathy for an appropriated and abused child, and challenging readers to evaluate their own ethical boundaries.
Lolita and the aesthetics of forbidden love
Lolita may thus be viewed as didactically reinforcing our distaste for Humbert as a sexual criminal but artistically examining the ardour, passion and romantic ideals behind his sexual misdeeds. While Humbert is a sexual predator and criminal, he is also an artist and intellectual who rationalizes and lends wit and charm to the crimes he is committing. So while Lolita was dismissed as pornography in many quarters ensuing its publication it is also arguably artistic in bringing out the depths of passion, torment and guilt that accompanies Humbert's fall as a sexual criminal and predator. Lolita then is an aesthetic of doomed and forbidden love rather than mere pornography.
“Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature and the Shaping of Lolita.”
In: Lolita: Critical Insights, edited by Rachel Stauffer, pp. 27-44. Ipswich, Mass.: Grey House Publishing/Salem Press, 2016
Lolita is well known as Nabokov’s most “American” novel, cementing his success as an American writer, paving the road to international fame, and famously highlighting the thorough knowledge of American culture that he acquired during years of residence in the United States. The author himself further accentuated his connection to the U.S. in subsequent interviews and autobiographical writings, downplaying the multiple layers of Russian culture that helped to shape his novel. Indeed, the extent to which this most American of novels sinks its roots deep into Russian literary tradition often escapes readers’ notice. Nonetheless, even while reinventing himself as an American writer, Nabokov continued to re-elaborate elements from the Russian texts that he knew well, echoing and often parodying antecedent images, bits of plot, literary personages, and narrative structures; the densely allusive Lolita, which has been described as postmodern for its numerous references to and sustained parallels with prior literary texts, is a case in point. This chapter outlines Lolita’s fundamental connection to several classic works from nineteenth-century Russian literature by outlining some of the multiple intertextual connections between that novel and its classic predecessors, specifically those authors and works whose themes, paradigms, and personages are relatively well-known – over and above their resonance in Lolita – and are especially likely to be familiar to students. It illuminates a part of Nabokov’s own cultural background, makes Pushkin, Gogol’, Lermontov, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy more clearly relevant for readers of Lolita, and engages students of the Russian nineteenth-century classics with issues of that tradition’s continuity into the next century. As will become clear, the dubious psychological state of Lolita’s protagonist, his perverse sexual desires, the techniques by which his character and crimes are revealed to the reader, and also the entanglement of identity involving author, authorial persona, and other literary personages may all be linked to Russian antecedents.
SEXUAL ABUSE IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV’S LOLITA: A Psychoanalytic approach to Humbert Humbert’s Sexuality
2020
Through examining Humbert Humbert's psychological defense mechanisms in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, this essay aims to analyze Humbert Humbert's sexuality through the framework of psychoanalytic theory by demonstrating how Humbert Humbert's abuse is employed as a psychological defense to process his sexuality. By analyzing his abusive actions, the results suggest that the reason for Humbert Humbert's psychological defense is caused by his fear of abandonment that has been a constant issue throughout the novel, both physically and emotionally. This essay shows that the inconsistency of Humbert Humbert's abusive behavior further indicates his denial and separation of self, contributing to his sexually abusive behavior.
The paper studies on the depiction and representation of nymphet's sexuality in Vladimir Nabokov's novel 'Lolita'. Lolita's sexuality as nymphet is depicted as a normal. Although, many reviews and critics in the past time judged Lolita's sexuality as depravity and deviant, this postulation is no longer considered as being right concomitantly with the development of knowledge in the field of sexuality (sexology) and the revelation of subjectivity theory. Moreover, there are another finding that someone's sexuality will be influenced by the hereditary, environments and experience. Lolita's sexuality also represents a nymphet's sexuality prototype in the 21 st century society. It becomes the proof of the finding when the novel published for the first time, there was a furor toward the theme of nymphet's sexuality. Now, the nymphet's sexuality which is drawn in the novel becomes common sexual activity in many nymphet's life.
Review of Lolita. The story of a cover girl. Vladimir Nabokov’s novel in art and design
Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2015
ISSN: 0008-5006 (Print) 2375-2475 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsp20 Lolita. The story of a cover girl. Vladimir Nabokov's novel in art and design Katherine Hill Reischl To cite this article: Katherine Hill Reischl (2015) Lolita. The story of a cover girl. Vladimir Nabokov's novel in art and design, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 57:1-2, 131-133,