Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0005570, Thu, 26 Oct 2000 11:01:47 -0700

Subject
Vn Bibliography: 1999-2000 VN theses & dissertations. Ben-Amos,
Hickson,Kondoyanidi
Date
Body
Ben-Amos, Anat. " Imagination of literature in the Russian prose of
Vladimir Nabokov" . University of Essax (UK), 1999


SOURCE DAI-C 60/04, p. 684, Winter 1999

In this thesis I investigate imagination and literature in the Russian
prose of Nabokov, concentrating on his writing in the 1930s. I examine
selected stories and novels and analyse them by close reading and
inter-textual connections, to establish the centrality of the concepts of
imagination and literature and the way they influence and shape each of the
texts discussed. Nabokov criticism had moved from describing his work as
aesthetic virtuosity lacking thematic content to regarding social-ethical
and metaphysical content as the centre of his prose. In my approach I wish
to show how concentrating on art and imagination in Nabokov does not lead
to
abandoning his thematic concerns, but is rather the key to understanding
them. Imagination and literature are depicted as an integral part of a
complete world and as the means to experience and express reality, both
physical and non-physical. The physical world and the world of the
imagination and of fiction are interwoven in Nabokov's writing, yet the
imagination has primacy in being the force without which the physical world
cannot exist. Literature is the central product of, as well as the main
influence on, the imagination in these works. These notions I illustrate
through the analysis of several stories, in each of which different aspects
of the imagination and literature and the relations between them have
important roles. I follow this by an analysis of the novel Glory (Podvig),
in which the imagination is stated to be divorced from literature yet in
which the presence of literature is central throughout. I end with an
analysis of the novel The Gift (Dar), in which imagination and literature
are shown in the greatest diversity and complexity in Nabokov's Russian
prose.




-------------------------------------------------
Hickson, Misty Lee "Perilous refuge: Art and obsession in three novels by
Vladimir NabokovDEGREE MA, Mississippi State U., 1999. pp. 53

SOURCE MAI 38/01, p. 43, Feb 2000




This study is a comparison of three Nabokovian narrators--Hermann
Karlovich
of Despair, Humbert Humbert of Lolita, and Charles Kinbote of Pale
Fire--and
each man's selfish attempt to fill the void in his life through an
obsession
with someone else or through creation as a prose artist. In the first
chapter, I establish the similarities of these narrators' lives, such as
their status as dissatisfied, exiled individuals. In the second chapter, I
discuss each narrator's obsession with another person--Hermann's obsession
with Felix, Humbert's obsession with Lolita, and Kinbote's obsession with
John Shade. In the third chapter, I examine the narrators' desires for
artistic perfection, for a distinct aesthetic to give these men's lives
meaning and direction. Hermann, Humbert, and Kinbote are men with varying
degrees of madness who create their own versions of 'reality' to compensate
for the external 'reality' that not only surrounds but also confronts them
daily.




----------------------------------

Kondoyanidi, Anita A. " Spatial form in Nabokov, Ishiguro, Auster:
Connecting postmodernism to modernism (Vladimir Nabokov, Kazuo Ishiguro,
Paul Auster). MA, U. of Alaska, 1999. pp.

The inclination towards spatiality, one of the prevalent features of
modernism, also plays a cardinal role in postmodern literature, signifying
a
subtle connection between these two literary movements. This thesis
explores
the gravitation towards spatiality in Vladimir Nabokov's Ada, Kazuo
Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World and The Remains of the Day, and
Paul Auster's Leviathan and The New York Trilogy. These novels are read
spatially by connecting individual details, following recurrent motifs and
tracing references to other texts. If Nabokov's Ada is more an example of a
modernist work, with its incessant fragments and details, Auster's and
Ishiguro's books are clearly instances of postmodern novels; spatiality is
even more explicit in them as their narratives are filled with metaphorical
physical spaces in which characters search for their identities. Readers
are
invited to approach these contemporary novels spatially. Thus,
postmodernists employ one of the tools of modernists (and this fact already
indicates a sign of continuity) but with an original twist: they not only
create fragmented narratives, but also draw metaphorical physical spaces
within their novels.