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Re: QUERY: Aunts and orphans and other issues
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There were several answers to the query about aunts and orphans.
SES mentioned Jane Eyre ( raised by her heartless Aunt Reed) and David Copperfield( his kind, eccentric aunt Betsy Trotwood ) and Pollyanna (1913) -- "but Jane, David, and Tom [Sawyer] are probably the best examples."
Wikipedia informed me that Dickens' aunt Betsy was a favourite among various writers and that James Joyce parodied her in "Ulysses".
In my own experience as a "foreigner" to British and American culture, while studying for my Cambrige Certificate of Proficiency in English, in its earliest stages when I was twelve or so, I had to read an abridged(!) version of exactly those two novels: "David Copperfield" and "Jane Eyre." I cannot even imagine that Nabokov, who'd been raised by French and English nannies, would have also begun his early reading experience in English using these abridged texts ( the third one was "A Tale of Two Cities")
On another issue, concerning VN's studies at Cambrige. No one remembered to include Nabokov's reference to "family jewels" that were sold to pave his and his brothers studies after they fled from Russia. I only vaguely recollect they were set down somewhere in SM.
Returning to Charles Darwin's accessment that "Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art." ( which I compared to Hegel's, on the same issue).
I only recently realized that many of the avant-garde tendencies which put so much emphasis on the artist's ability to create his characters ab nihilo ( refusing tradition and other heritages) were, indirectly, refusing evolutionism and favouring... creationism!
Metaphorically, at least, also VN seems to have belonged to the group of "literary creationists"...
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SES mentioned Jane Eyre ( raised by her heartless Aunt Reed) and David Copperfield( his kind, eccentric aunt Betsy Trotwood ) and Pollyanna (1913) -- "but Jane, David, and Tom [Sawyer] are probably the best examples."
Wikipedia informed me that Dickens' aunt Betsy was a favourite among various writers and that James Joyce parodied her in "Ulysses".
In my own experience as a "foreigner" to British and American culture, while studying for my Cambrige Certificate of Proficiency in English, in its earliest stages when I was twelve or so, I had to read an abridged(!) version of exactly those two novels: "David Copperfield" and "Jane Eyre." I cannot even imagine that Nabokov, who'd been raised by French and English nannies, would have also begun his early reading experience in English using these abridged texts ( the third one was "A Tale of Two Cities")
On another issue, concerning VN's studies at Cambrige. No one remembered to include Nabokov's reference to "family jewels" that were sold to pave his and his brothers studies after they fled from Russia. I only vaguely recollect they were set down somewhere in SM.
Returning to Charles Darwin's accessment that "Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art." ( which I compared to Hegel's, on the same issue).
I only recently realized that many of the avant-garde tendencies which put so much emphasis on the artist's ability to create his characters ab nihilo ( refusing tradition and other heritages) were, indirectly, refusing evolutionism and favouring... creationism!
Metaphorically, at least, also VN seems to have belonged to the group of "literary creationists"...
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/