Udith DEMATAGODA
University of Glasgow
Thesis Title: ‘The Loathsome Tint of Social Intent: Ideology and Aesthetics in the works of Vladimir Nabokov’
Enrolment year: 2010
Projected year of completion: 2014
Supervisors: Professor Laurence Davies, Dr. John Coyle, Dr. Andrei Rogatchevski 

 

Ideology, Epistemology, and the ‘Modernism of Underdevelopment’ in The Eye and Despair

Within past and recent criticism, it is a widely held assumption that Nabokov should be regarded as a direct descendant of the Russian Symbolist tradition. It is a critical assumption which ascribes to Nabokov an epistemology which has its roots in the transcendence of everyday reality, a metaphysical Idealism which, though ostensibly camouflaged, is purported to be consistent throughout the Nabokovian corpus and, perhaps most significantly, a very distinct historical subjectivity. With the publication of Vladimir Alexandrov’s Otherworld, this burgeoning critical tendency became ubiquitous, and continues to be the subject of varied research. Yet there are two important aspects of this assumption which have heretofore been overlooked and remain problematic; primarily whether such an assumption is entirely justified, and secondly the nature of its ideological significance. The often acerbic opposition of Symbolism and Formalism in early twentieth century Russian literature was tainted by class politics; it was, in essence, as equally ideological as it was aesthetic.

As John Burt Foster has proposed, behind the Nabokovian aesthetic there is a tension, an ‘almost paradoxical juxtaposition- the modernist urge to “make it new” recoiling into the past to become an art of personal memory.’[1]It is the contention of my thesis that his work of the émigré period up to and including The Gift involves a series of aesthetic vacillations and evolutions which were influenced by his engagement with a changing political and ideological landscape. Furthermore, these aesthetic developments also derive from an attempted negotiation between two contrasting strands of the Russian ‘Modernism of Underdevelopment’[2]- Symbolism and Formalism. In my paper, I shall attempt to illustrate how this negotiation manifests itself in two works written within two years of each other, the short novella The Eye (1930) and Despair (1932).

 

Bio: Udith Dematagoda graduated in 2008 with a MA (hons) in Comparative Literature and Slavonic Studies from The University of Glasgow, before taking a Masters degree in English from The University of Manchester in 2009. She completed a intensive diploma in Russian language at Glasgow, before embarking on her PhD research on Vladimir Nabokov in 2010. She has taught at the University of Glasgow from 2010-2012, and currently teach at the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis as a Lecteur d’anglais. She has published on Vladimir Nabokov in publications such as the Slavonic and East European Review (SEER) and The Nabokov Online Journal (NOJ). She has presented papers at various universities in the UK and at Nabokov Readings conference at The St. Petersburg State University’s Vladimir Nabokov museum in Russia. She spent the summer of 2013 in New York conducting research at The Berg Collection of Modernist English and American Literature at The New York Public Library.

 

Katherina KOKINOVA
PhD in comparative literary studies, Department of Slavic Literature, Sofia University, Bulgaria
Dissertation Title: The self-reflection in the oeuvre of Vladimir Nabokov and Witold Gombrowicz
Enrollment date: 2012 Estimated year of completion: 2015
University adviser: Prof. Dr. Panayot Karagyozov

 
Training the Reader by Means of Self-reflection

This paper studies comparatively the self-reflective forewords and comments in parenthesis in Nabokov’s Despair and Gombrowicz’s Pornografia. There are at least two means of self-reflection used in the analysed novels: guidelines and doubles. Are the instructions a prerequisite for new discoveries or they rather suppress scientific passion, or maybe they are a stage in the process of training the reader? Do they facilitate the “author’s fondest dream to turn the reader into a spectator”? And how many times should one reread such a novel in order to “get nearer to reality” though not close enough? We may even observe the “implied reader” embodied, explicated in Despair. The other mean used in both novels in terms of self-reflection is the figure of the double, the alter ego. It raises questions such as: if Nabokov’s and Gombrowicz’s narrators are usually unreliable in regard to their perception about themselves and the world, in regard to their self-reflection, then can they be trusted in terms of guidelines? This study is an attempt to “get nearer” to what “the sailor has hidden” in terms of training the reader.

Nathalia SALIBA DIAS
Title (estimated): Literary incest or the meaning of incest in Vladimir Nabokov’s work
Institution: Humboldt University (Berlin)         Name of the supervisor: Helga Schwalm
Registration: May 2013
Date of completion (estimated):  2016/2017

The meaning of incest in Nabokov’s work

The proposal of research is to analyse the works by Vladimir Nabokov, specifically three novels, which deal with incest – Lolita, Ada or Ardor: a family Chronicle and Look at the Harlequins! – in order to understand why Nabokov chose this controversial subject and what its meaning in his work. It is also intended to pursue the subject in the short stories and poems of the author, being able to explain how he dealt with incest through his career.

To precede this analysis, the present research is organized in three chapters: in the first part the meaning of incest in different literary periods will be examined; in the second, the sources of Nabokov’s late flowering use of incest and, than, to present an interpretation of incest in Nabokov’s work.

Amid Nabokov’s work it is only in Ada or Ardor (1969) that incest is a major subject. In Lolita (1955) it appears only indirectly or disguised and in Look at Harlequins (1977) it will be incorporated as a retrospective of the author’s favorite themes.

The theory is, that incest rises in the late work of Nabokov as a creative incestuous relationship between many generations of writers and styles. Nabokov traces the evolution of the theme in the European Literature and intercourses them in a creative process, as a reworking of a tradition, a literary incest.

In this context, the meaning of incestuous behavior – which is usually, associated with fear, in the Gothic tradition or, with rebellion and alienation in the romantic approach – shifts to a new light. Now incest concerns the process of writing, the literary inheritance of a tradition and the creative voice.  It is a new Nabokovian ripple, only possible in the 20th century within the metafictional writing.
Bibliographical References

ALDRIDGE, Alfred Owen. The meaning of incest from Hutcheson to Gibbon. In: Ethics, V.61, No. 4. Chicago. 1951. pp. 309-313.

ARIÈS, Philippe. Centuries of childhood: a social history of family life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.

BOYD, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: American Years. New Jersey: Princenton University, 1990.

BOYD, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: Russian Years. New Jersey: Princenton University, 1991.

BIXLER, RAY. The multiple meaning of incest. The Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 19, No. 2 (May, 1983), pp. 197-201

BOLINGBROKE, Henry St. John, Lord Viscount. The Works of the late right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke with the Life of Lord Bolingbroke. London, 1809. Vol. VII. p. 496.

DENBO, J. Seth. Speaking Relatively: a History of Incest and the Family in the Eighteenth-Century England.  Ph.D. Thesis Warwick – Department of History. September 2011.

FREUD, Sigmund. Totem and Taboo. New York: WW Norton Company, 1989.

FOUCAULT, Michael. History of Sexuality. Volume I: An introduction. New York: Hurley, 1978. p. 106.

FINNEY, Gail. Self-reflexive siblings: Incest as narcissism in Tieck, Wagner and Thomas Mann. The German Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Mar., 1983), pp. 243-256.

JOHNSON, Barton. The Labyrinth of incest in Nabokov’s Ada In: Comparative Literature. Vol. 38. No. 3, 1986. pp.224 – 255.

JULIAR , Michael. Vladimir Nabokov: a Descriptive Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1986.

LÉVI-STRAUSS, Claude. The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.

MASON, Bobbie Ann. Nabokov’s Garden: A Guide to Ada. Ardis: 1974.

MCCRACKEN, Timothy. Lolita talks back: giving voice to the object. He said, she says: An rsvp to the Male Text. London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. 128-42.

NABOKOV, Vladimir. Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle. New York: Penguin, 2008.

_______. Nabokov’s Butterflies. Ed. An. BOYD, Brian. PYLE, Robert Michael. Boston: Beacon Press. 2000.

_______. The Annotated Lolita. New York: Penguin, 2000.

_______. The Gift. New York: Penguin, 1980.

_______. Look at the Harlequins. New York: Vintage International, 1990.

_______. Strong Opinions. New York: Vintage International, 1990.

NAGLE, Betty Rose. Byblis and Myrrha: Two Incest Narratives in the « Metamorphoses ». The classical association of the middle west and south. The Classical Journal, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Apr. – May, 1983), pp. 301-315.

NESTERUK, Peter. Referentiality and transgression: representation of incest and child sexual abuse in American literature of the twentieth century. Nottingham University. P.h.D Thesis. October, 1994.

OLSEN, Lance. Lolita: A Janus Text. New York: Twayne Publishers,1995.

PERRY, Ruth. Incest as the Meaning of the Gothic Novel In: English century. Vol.39. No. 3, 1998. p. 261 – 277.

PIPER, Ellen. Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita: a casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

PLATO. Symposium. New York: Penguin books, 1999.

POLLAK, Ellen. Incest and the English novel: 1684 – 1814. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2003.

RANK, OTTO. Das inzest-motif und in dichtung und saga: Gründzuge einer psychologie des dichterischen Schaffens. Verlag Classic Edition, 2010.

RICHARDSON, Alan. The dangers of sympathy: sibling Incest in the English Romantic Poetry In: Studies in English Literature, 1500 – 1900, Vol. 25. No. 4, Nineteenth Century. pp. 737 – 754.

SCHWALM, Helga. Dekonstruktion im Roman : erzähltechnische Verfahren und Selbstreflexion in den Romanen von Vladimir Nabokov und Samuel Beckett. Heidelberg : Winter, 1991.

SHELTON, Jen. Issy’s Footnote: Disruptive Narrative and the Discursive Structure of Incest in « Finnegan Wake ». ELH, Vol. 66, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), pp. 203-221. John Hopkins University press.

STANSBURY, Heather Lyn. Romantic incest: gender, desire and defiance. Dissertation of Doctor on Philosophy. University of Washington, 2008.

WAUGH, Patricia. Metafiction: the theory and practice of self-conscious fiction. New York: Rutledge, 2000. 

RAPF, Joan E. The Byronic heroine: incest and creative process. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 21, No. 4, Nineteenth Century (Autumn, 1981), Rice University. pp. 637-645.

THORSLEV, Peter L. Incest as a romantic symbol. In: Comparative Studies. v.2 No.1. Penn State University Press, 1965. pp. 41 -58.

KENNER, Hugh. Ulysses. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1987.

 

Chloë KITZINGER
PhD Candidate, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California, Berkeley
Enrolled Fall 2009; estimated date of completion Spring 2015
Title of dissertation: “The Problematic Individual”: The Lives of Characters in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
Supervisors: Irina Paperno (chair, Slavic), Eric Naiman (Slavic), Dorothy Hale(English) 

 “A Variety of Forms”: Reading Character in Nabokov

My project, an extension of my broader interest in character and the novel form, explores Nabokov’s approach to character in the novel. Nabokov’s style poses a curious dilemma: while a wealth of concrete descriptive detail tempts readers to immerse themselves in the fictional worlds of his novels, the flamboyance of their formal organization offers an equally tempting view from above or outside the frame. One of the many problems this hybrid form presents is the status of Nabokov’s characters. As a reader and teacher, Nabokov repeatedly dismissed the “lowly kind of” imagination that prompts novel-readers to identify themselves with particular heroes (“Good Readers and Good Writers,” 4). This dismissal mirrors what has been called a “pronouncedly anti-polyphonic feature” in Nabokov’s own novels (Tammi, Problems of Nabokov’s Poetics, 100), a leaning toward a hieroglyphic rather than a moral view of the literary “character.” From the vivid but ephemeral interlocutors – some of them ghosts – who pass through the mind of the fictional author Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev in The Gift (1938/1963), to the personified vegetables encircling Hugh Person, the weirdly abstract hero of Transparent Things (1972), the figural characters of Nabokov’s novels are both arresting in themselves, and pointedly instrumental. My project aims to illuminate the sometimes-troubled place of the embodied human figure in Nabokov – the figures of the characters, their occasionally spectral narrators, and (eventually) their implied author and readers. Working outward from the suggestion, in Transparent Things, that “human life can be compared to a person dancing in a variety of forms around his own self” (92), I argue that the function of figural character in Nabokov’s novels is intimately connected with the project of making a central, private consciousness apprehensible to an external sensory world. I concentrate on Lolita (1955) and Pnin (1955, pub. 1957) as telling examples, but expand my conclusions to the level of what might be called Nabokov’s theory of character, evidenced both in his own novels, and his approach to reading the works of the “good writers” of the 19th and 20th century. My work thus attempts to place Nabokov in a longer tradition of tension between character and form in the novel, examining him as a successor to and reader of Dickens, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, and reflecting on his (post-)modernist response to the problems of character their novels pose.

Works Cited:

Nabokov, V. “Good Readers and Good Writers.” In Lectures on Literature. Ed. F. Bowers. San Diego, New York, London: Harvest, 1980. 1-7.

——— Transparent Things. New York: Vintage Books, 1989 [1972].

P. Tammi. Problems of Nabokov’s Poetics: A Narratological Analysis. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1985.

Michael FEDERSPIEL
« Valeurs et enjeux d’une littérature polémique : jeux de langues et stratégies de l’indicible dans Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov et The Satanic Verses de Salman Rushdie »
Année d’inscription: Septembre 2008 – Soutenance: Novembre 2014
Thèse de doctorat en préparation sous la direction de Mme le Professeur Charlotte STURGESS – Université de Strasbourg, littérature anglaise.

The Sweet Game of Anaesthesia : a Selection of Nabokov’s Playful Conditioning Strategies in Lolita. 

The analogy between literature and games was dear to Nabokov, especially when it came to the realm of chess and its problems, which pervade the mechanics of many of his novels. The very principle of « game » involves, as the definition of the term has it, the notion of pleasure drawn from playful activity. Nabokov, who himself advocated the « tingle in the spine » (Lectures in Literature) and « aesthetic bliss » (On a book entitled Lolita), has a vision of literature as a game that should be pleasurable both to the writer and the reader. Each on their own, author and reader draw pleasure from the act of writing or making sense of what is written ; together, they sometimes frolic in the excitement of shared knowledge, or in the fun of playing hide-and-seek. At other times yet, they contend in solving conundrums that will leave the slower-minded participant a loser in the game.

Those games and other assimilated activities are not only diversions that take the reader’s mind off the topic he reads about, they are also a way to have the reader who is willing to play accept a new order. The reader who embarks on the game has to accept some rules and to project himself in an environment that obeys those rules. A novel such as Lolita, that takes the reader on a very subversive trip, has to teach him to correctly read the new world it offers, for fear of losing him. Proper teaching only guarantees that the reader will take his part in the game and will stop perceiving some subjects as offensive.

Lolita uses many rhetorical, literary or linguistic games that help set up a literary context in which taking offense will no longer be the most appealing option. In this paper, I will dwell essentially on the role of dialogism and poetry, as well as on some specific figures of speech. I will try and show how they are used to lull the reader’s attention, but also to condition his reactions, and finally how they prompt him to have his share in the buoyantly deviant potential of Lolita. Whenever it is relevant and helps conceive of a common treatment of polemical subjects, I will compare Nabokov’s strategies in Lolita with Rushdie’s in The Satanic Verses, the second object of my study.