NABOKV-L post 0011319, Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:34:46 -0700

----- Forwarded message from hailstonedawson@yahoo.com -----
Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 13:56:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kellie Dawson <hailstonedawson@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: kr46@cornell.edu
Subject: Dissertation Abstract
To:

Per Prof. Johnson's kind suggestion, below is my dissertation abstact.


PORTIONS OF HEAVEN AND HELL: SYMPATHY AND SUFFERING IN LOLITA

Kellie Dawson, Ph.D.

Cornell University

My fascination with the connection between literature and mainstream America is
the basis for this dissertation which intends to explore the roots of the
culturally-specific assumptions that a reader may bring to so notorious a text
as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Firmly grounded in my interest in observing the
vagaries of the American imagination, this work examines the ways Lolita
challenges those assumptions and how it may even have had the effect of
transforming them. In so doing I reveal the extent to which cultural theory and
literary products interact with and upon each other to produce a society’s
collective ideals.

Although Vladimir Nabokov denies that he is a writer of didactic fiction, Lolita
does carry a valuable lesson. Unfortunately, even though it is the most popular
and widely read of his novels, it is also the most resisted. Its characters,
situations and themes are so sensational that they tend to distract from the
deeper inquiry that is at the core of this inflammatory text. Even as scholars
acknowledge it as a literary masterpiece it has never lost its reputation as a
"dirty" book – and this reputation still receives more popular attention than
do the issues it raises about the tenuous nature of human civility. The
overblown consideration given to pedophilic narratives in our culture creates
an imbalance of reader engagement that may interfere with attention to the
larger questions Nabokov tracks throughout his oeuvre. Lolita, along with being
an insightful report of 1950s American culture and a masterful demonstration of
the flexibility of the English language, is an extraordinary examination of
both the heights and the depths of human sensibility. In this novel, Nabokov
demonstrates the suffering of the most "monstrous" of men and convinces his
readers to sympathize with him even as they continue to abhor his crimes.

Through his extended reading of early sexologists and his research into American
adolescence, Nabokov was well aware of the image of "the pedophile" and "the
teen" his readers would bring to his novel. In Lolita he systematically
demolishes these expectations. His "pedophile" is not a drooling pervert who
lures little girls into the bushes – and since his "teen" is no blushing
innocent the reader must re-evaluate what she thought she knew about adult
sexual deviance and child sexuality. Complications such as these, of
suppositions the reader had assumed she could take for granted, influence her
to re-examine her own humanity, her own complicity in the ideologies that
usually cause her to pre-judge and condemn those who are most in need of
sympathy. Through demolition of the stereotypes of "pervert" and "victim,"
Nabokov teaches the reader to reject categories such as "pedophile" and
"adolescent" in favor of attention to the human beings we force into these
roles.