Subject
Online LOLITA materials
From
Date
Body
Bruno Osimo "Nabokov's selftranslation: interpretation problems & solutions
in LOLITA's Russian version."
A comparison of four versions of the opening of LOLITA: English, Russian,
and two Italian---one of the latter by Osimo who is the translator of one of
the two Italian editions of LO. Also a handy compendium of VN comments on
translation.
http://www.ut.ee/SOSE/7osimo.html
---------------------------------
The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov's LOLITA" by Nomi Tamir-Ghez
An on-screen version of an important early article on rhetoric in LOLITA.
http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/pub/poetics/art/art5.html
----------------------------------------------------------
A collection of LOLITA sites is listed at:
http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=lol-339 the
Internet Public Library
Online Literary Criticism Collection
Note several of these items are important articles from the journal NABOKOV
STUDIES published by the INTERNATIONAL VLADIMIR NABOKOV SOCIETY and
featured on its www-site ZEMBLA
Sites about Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
An Englishman in New England falls in love with 12-year-old Lolita and
marries the girl's mother.
Characters: Humbert Humbert, Lolita Haze, Charlotte Haze, Clare Quilty
Critical sites about Lolita
Doubles, Deceit, and Reflexive Narrative in Two Novels by Vladimir
Nabokov
ftp://fyl.unizar.es/PUB/MISCELANEA/15/BARRERAS.ZIP
"Nabokov's novels show that imagination creates its own reality
by giving order and
meaning to a subject. They do not reflect reality but instead
they express their own
individual reality. The motif of the Doppelgänger or double is
one of the main devices
used by Nabokov. It allows the novelist to parody consciously and
symmetrically the
actions of the characters. It is a recurring design by which the
novel refers to itself. The
heroes of both Despair and Lolita describe their relationship
with their double and his
murder. However, the reader is never sure whether the story of
the double is true or
whether the doubles are in fact just part of the protagonists'
imagination. The reader has
to decide whether the story is true or not. This is a
metafictional feature. The reader
creates the novel as well, when he decides what to believe. Both
novels remind the reader
that fiction is an illusion, and not the reality it may seem."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: María Asunción Barreras Gómez
From: Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies Vol.
15 (1994)
Keywords: reality
"Even Homais Nods": Nabokov's Fallibility, or, How to Revise Lolita
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/boyd1.htm
"To refute this reading, I will first show that Nabokov could
indeed make mistakes,
especially in dating, and that second thoughts often merely
compounded the confusion. I
will then show how little is required to eliminate the
revisionist interpretation of Lolita (the
emendation of a single typographical character would suffice),
and how plainly it
contradicts itself and the rest of the text."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Brian Boyd
From: Nabokov Studies #2
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/classrev/lolita.htm
"For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material
hundred-proof intellectual
farce. His book is slightly reminiscent of Thomas Mann's
Confessions of Felix Krull; but
Lolita has a stronger charge of comic genius and is more
brilliantly written. Mr. Nabokov,
a Russian émigré now working in his second tongue, has few living
equals as a virtuoso in
the handling of the English language."
Contains: Review
Author: Charles Rolo
From: Atlantic Monthly September, 1958; Volume 202, No. 3; page
78
On the Road to Canterbury, Liliput and Elphinstone
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/schuman.htm
"Two of the most compelling and well-known satiric masterpieces
of the English language
tradition, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Vladimir
Nabokov's Lolita derive much of
their vigor from the Chaucerian tradition. Perhaps more
surprisingly, and more revealingly,
the Twentieth-Century work exhibits an interesting and
illuminating set of rather particular
correspondences with the 1726 novel."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Samuel Schuman
The Poerotic Novel: Nabokov's Lolita and Ada
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/coutur1.htm
"he poerotic mode best represented by the Nabokovian novel
constitutes a fusion of the
pornographic, the comic and the ironic modes: it openly seeks to
produce a strong erotic
effect in the reader, but also a comic and ironic one, while
seemingly keeping the author¹s
desires out of reach. The Nabokovian text is a sophisticated
engine which generates
powerful desires and paralyzes the reader¹s critical judgment."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Maurice Couturier
From: Novel and Censorship, or Eros' Bad Faith (Seyssel: Champ
Vallon, 1996)
Reflexive Narrative in Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
ftp://fyl.unizar.es/PUB/MISCELANEA/16/BARRERAS.ZIP
"What Nabokov's narrators produce is not a faithful record of the
past but an imaginative
invention, mediated by their point of view, their metafictional
consciousness and their
active manipulation of the story. There is, then, a difficulty in
portraying reality, because
any point of view on reality is a subjective one, in which memory
and imagination are
mixed. Nabokov recognizes that he cannot show reality in a simple
form. An analysis of
the narration in Lolita shows a more problematic relationship
between fiction and reality
than the one realist fiction allows the reader to acknowledge."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Asunción Barreras Gómez
From: Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies Vol.
16 (1995)
"The Strange Particularity of the Lover's Preference": Pedophilia,
pornography, and the anatomy on montrosity in Lolita
http://library.northernlight.com/BM19990302040009680.html
"Whiting examines the Cold War period's public perception of
Vladimir Nabokov through
the character of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's novel "Lolita."
Humbert himself seems to
point toward what is perceived to be the unnatural and monsterous
imagination of his
creator, whose dismissal of didactic literature and fierce
devotion to pure formalism, not to
mention his Russian birth, fitted him perfectly for parenting a
moral monster."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Frederick Whiting
From: American Literature Vol. 70 No. 4; p. 833
Access Restrictions: NL
Other (non-critical) sites about Lolita
Books of the Times
http://forums.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-booksoftimes.html
"Mr. Nabokov is particularly lucky because his book was not
censored in the United
States, but in France of all places. What more could he hope
for?"
Contains: Review
Author: Orville Prescott
From: The New York Times Book Review August 18, 1958
Reading Group Guide: Lolita
http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/lolita/
"The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and
bibliography that follow are
designed to enhance your group's reading of Vladimir Nabokov's
Lolita. We hope they
will provide you with ways of looking at-and talking about-a
novel that has become a
permanent part of the American literary canon, and indeed of the
American language,
without losing its capacity to dazzle, baffle, and at times shock
the unwary reader."
Contains: Plot Summary
Keywords: study questions
The Tragedy of Man Driven by Desire
http://forums.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-lolita.html
"The first time I read Lolita I thought it was one of the
funniest books I¹d ever come on.
The second time I read it, uncut, I thought it was one of the
saddest. I mention this
personal reaction only because Lolita is one of those occasional
books which arrive
swishing behind them a long tail of opinion and reputation which
can knock the unwary
reader off his feet."
Contains: Review
Author: Elizabeth Janeway
From: The New York Times Book Review August 17, 1958
------------------------------------
"Die History von Lolita No. 18"
A German fan site for a Japanese girl trio named "Lolita No. 18"
http://www.thebates.com/fanclub/lolita.htm
-----------------------------------------
AN English abstract of a recent Russian volume by Alexander Luxemburg &
Galina Rakhimkulova: MAGISTER LUDI: WORD PLAY IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV'S PROSE IN
THE LIGHT OF A THEORY OF PUNS
in LOLITA's Russian version."
A comparison of four versions of the opening of LOLITA: English, Russian,
and two Italian---one of the latter by Osimo who is the translator of one of
the two Italian editions of LO. Also a handy compendium of VN comments on
translation.
http://www.ut.ee/SOSE/7osimo.html
---------------------------------
The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov's LOLITA" by Nomi Tamir-Ghez
An on-screen version of an important early article on rhetoric in LOLITA.
http://spinoza.tau.ac.il/hci/pub/poetics/art/art5.html
----------------------------------------------------------
A collection of LOLITA sites is listed at:
http://www.ipl.org/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=lol-339 the
Internet Public Library
Online Literary Criticism Collection
Note several of these items are important articles from the journal NABOKOV
STUDIES published by the INTERNATIONAL VLADIMIR NABOKOV SOCIETY and
featured on its www-site ZEMBLA
Sites about Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
An Englishman in New England falls in love with 12-year-old Lolita and
marries the girl's mother.
Characters: Humbert Humbert, Lolita Haze, Charlotte Haze, Clare Quilty
Critical sites about Lolita
Doubles, Deceit, and Reflexive Narrative in Two Novels by Vladimir
Nabokov
ftp://fyl.unizar.es/PUB/MISCELANEA/15/BARRERAS.ZIP
"Nabokov's novels show that imagination creates its own reality
by giving order and
meaning to a subject. They do not reflect reality but instead
they express their own
individual reality. The motif of the Doppelgänger or double is
one of the main devices
used by Nabokov. It allows the novelist to parody consciously and
symmetrically the
actions of the characters. It is a recurring design by which the
novel refers to itself. The
heroes of both Despair and Lolita describe their relationship
with their double and his
murder. However, the reader is never sure whether the story of
the double is true or
whether the doubles are in fact just part of the protagonists'
imagination. The reader has
to decide whether the story is true or not. This is a
metafictional feature. The reader
creates the novel as well, when he decides what to believe. Both
novels remind the reader
that fiction is an illusion, and not the reality it may seem."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: María Asunción Barreras Gómez
From: Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies Vol.
15 (1994)
Keywords: reality
"Even Homais Nods": Nabokov's Fallibility, or, How to Revise Lolita
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/boyd1.htm
"To refute this reading, I will first show that Nabokov could
indeed make mistakes,
especially in dating, and that second thoughts often merely
compounded the confusion. I
will then show how little is required to eliminate the
revisionist interpretation of Lolita (the
emendation of a single typographical character would suffice),
and how plainly it
contradicts itself and the rest of the text."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Brian Boyd
From: Nabokov Studies #2
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/classrev/lolita.htm
"For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material
hundred-proof intellectual
farce. His book is slightly reminiscent of Thomas Mann's
Confessions of Felix Krull; but
Lolita has a stronger charge of comic genius and is more
brilliantly written. Mr. Nabokov,
a Russian émigré now working in his second tongue, has few living
equals as a virtuoso in
the handling of the English language."
Contains: Review
Author: Charles Rolo
From: Atlantic Monthly September, 1958; Volume 202, No. 3; page
78
On the Road to Canterbury, Liliput and Elphinstone
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/schuman.htm
"Two of the most compelling and well-known satiric masterpieces
of the English language
tradition, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Vladimir
Nabokov's Lolita derive much of
their vigor from the Chaucerian tradition. Perhaps more
surprisingly, and more revealingly,
the Twentieth-Century work exhibits an interesting and
illuminating set of rather particular
correspondences with the 1726 novel."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Samuel Schuman
The Poerotic Novel: Nabokov's Lolita and Ada
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/coutur1.htm
"he poerotic mode best represented by the Nabokovian novel
constitutes a fusion of the
pornographic, the comic and the ironic modes: it openly seeks to
produce a strong erotic
effect in the reader, but also a comic and ironic one, while
seemingly keeping the author¹s
desires out of reach. The Nabokovian text is a sophisticated
engine which generates
powerful desires and paralyzes the reader¹s critical judgment."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Maurice Couturier
From: Novel and Censorship, or Eros' Bad Faith (Seyssel: Champ
Vallon, 1996)
Reflexive Narrative in Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
ftp://fyl.unizar.es/PUB/MISCELANEA/16/BARRERAS.ZIP
"What Nabokov's narrators produce is not a faithful record of the
past but an imaginative
invention, mediated by their point of view, their metafictional
consciousness and their
active manipulation of the story. There is, then, a difficulty in
portraying reality, because
any point of view on reality is a subjective one, in which memory
and imagination are
mixed. Nabokov recognizes that he cannot show reality in a simple
form. An analysis of
the narration in Lolita shows a more problematic relationship
between fiction and reality
than the one realist fiction allows the reader to acknowledge."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Asunción Barreras Gómez
From: Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies Vol.
16 (1995)
"The Strange Particularity of the Lover's Preference": Pedophilia,
pornography, and the anatomy on montrosity in Lolita
http://library.northernlight.com/BM19990302040009680.html
"Whiting examines the Cold War period's public perception of
Vladimir Nabokov through
the character of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's novel "Lolita."
Humbert himself seems to
point toward what is perceived to be the unnatural and monsterous
imagination of his
creator, whose dismissal of didactic literature and fierce
devotion to pure formalism, not to
mention his Russian birth, fitted him perfectly for parenting a
moral monster."
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Frederick Whiting
From: American Literature Vol. 70 No. 4; p. 833
Access Restrictions: NL
Other (non-critical) sites about Lolita
Books of the Times
http://forums.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-booksoftimes.html
"Mr. Nabokov is particularly lucky because his book was not
censored in the United
States, but in France of all places. What more could he hope
for?"
Contains: Review
Author: Orville Prescott
From: The New York Times Book Review August 18, 1958
Reading Group Guide: Lolita
http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/lolita/
"The questions, discussion topics, author biography, and
bibliography that follow are
designed to enhance your group's reading of Vladimir Nabokov's
Lolita. We hope they
will provide you with ways of looking at-and talking about-a
novel that has become a
permanent part of the American literary canon, and indeed of the
American language,
without losing its capacity to dazzle, baffle, and at times shock
the unwary reader."
Contains: Plot Summary
Keywords: study questions
The Tragedy of Man Driven by Desire
http://forums.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-lolita.html
"The first time I read Lolita I thought it was one of the
funniest books I¹d ever come on.
The second time I read it, uncut, I thought it was one of the
saddest. I mention this
personal reaction only because Lolita is one of those occasional
books which arrive
swishing behind them a long tail of opinion and reputation which
can knock the unwary
reader off his feet."
Contains: Review
Author: Elizabeth Janeway
From: The New York Times Book Review August 17, 1958
------------------------------------
"Die History von Lolita No. 18"
A German fan site for a Japanese girl trio named "Lolita No. 18"
http://www.thebates.com/fanclub/lolita.htm
-----------------------------------------
AN English abstract of a recent Russian volume by Alexander Luxemburg &
Galina Rakhimkulova: MAGISTER LUDI: WORD PLAY IN VLADIMIR NABOKOV'S PROSE IN
THE LIGHT OF A THEORY OF PUNS