Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook / Edition 1

by Ellen Pifer

Overview

Midway through the last century, Lolita burst on the literary scene—a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the New World. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject—the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl—was quickly upstaged by the critical attention it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays about Lolita. The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader topics and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195150339
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/21/2002
Series:	Casebooks in Criticism
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.96(w) x 6.84(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Ellen Pifer is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Delaware. She is a former president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and the author of Nabokov and the Novel.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction2. The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov's Lolita: Nomi Tamir-Ghez3. Parody and Authenticity in Lolita: Thomas R. Frosch4. "Even Homais Nods": Nabokov's Fallibility, or How to Revise Lolita: Bryan Boyd5. Nabokov's Novel Offspring: Lolita and Her Kin: Ellen Pifer6. "So Nakedly Dressed": The Text of the Female Body in Nabokov's Novels: Jenefer Shute7. "Ballet Attitudes": Nabokov's Lolita and Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney8. Artist in Exile: The Americanization of Humbert Humbert: John Haegert9. Lolita and the Poetry of Advertising: Rachel Bowlby10. Revisiting Lolita [on film]: Michael Wood11. Interview with Vladimir Nabokov: Herbert Gold

Editorial Reviews

"Pifer is to be congratulated for having pulled together a collection of essays that are all intensely concerned with ethical issues surrounding Lolita and its characters.... This anthology gives scholars and their students a valuable new tool for coming to terms with an extraordinary novel and the difficult feelings it evokes."—The Russian Review

From the Publisher