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[SIGHTING] Bedi Dobbin
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'A Little Ghost in Natural Colors': Nabokov and the Reproduction of Colour
Wednesday, 6 June 2012
12:00 - 14:00
Location: Alison Richard Building, ground floor, SG1
Dr Beci Dobbin (English) presents at the CRASSH Postdoctoral Research Seminar
Abstract
In writing in 1971 that 'a bad memoirist re-touches his past, and the result is a blue-tinted or pink-shaded photograph', Nabokov locates himself on the snobbish side of a contemporary debate about the merits of colour photography. The problem with photographic colour has always been that the effect can seem artificial. But it was in the 1950s and 1960s, when coloured images in magazines and films, and later in polaroid snapshots and on television screens, were gradually becoming normal that their 'bepop and electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens' - to borrow the photographer Walker Evans's sneering phrases - came to suggest a lack of cultural sophistication. As Evans writes: 'There are four words which must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar.' In reading the self-consciously artificial colours of Lolita (1955) and Pale Fire (1962) as an aspect of the larger interest in misrepresentation which characterises Nabokov's post-war work, this paper will consider his sense of the 'vulgarity' of garishness as a mode of inspiration. In both these novels, I will argue, unnatural or 'natural' colour is crucial to the conception of fictional worlds.
The event is free to attend but registration is required. Please click on the link at the right hand side of the page to register online.
About Beci Dobbin
Beci Dobbin is in the fourth year of her junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. She works on Modernist literature and popular culture, with an emphasis on photography and film. She is currently gathering material for a book on Nabokov's shallowness.
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
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Wednesday, 6 June 2012
12:00 - 14:00
Location: Alison Richard Building, ground floor, SG1
Dr Beci Dobbin (English) presents at the CRASSH Postdoctoral Research Seminar
Abstract
In writing in 1971 that 'a bad memoirist re-touches his past, and the result is a blue-tinted or pink-shaded photograph', Nabokov locates himself on the snobbish side of a contemporary debate about the merits of colour photography. The problem with photographic colour has always been that the effect can seem artificial. But it was in the 1950s and 1960s, when coloured images in magazines and films, and later in polaroid snapshots and on television screens, were gradually becoming normal that their 'bepop and electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens' - to borrow the photographer Walker Evans's sneering phrases - came to suggest a lack of cultural sophistication. As Evans writes: 'There are four words which must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar.' In reading the self-consciously artificial colours of Lolita (1955) and Pale Fire (1962) as an aspect of the larger interest in misrepresentation which characterises Nabokov's post-war work, this paper will consider his sense of the 'vulgarity' of garishness as a mode of inspiration. In both these novels, I will argue, unnatural or 'natural' colour is crucial to the conception of fictional worlds.
The event is free to attend but registration is required. Please click on the link at the right hand side of the page to register online.
About Beci Dobbin
Beci Dobbin is in the fourth year of her junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. She works on Modernist literature and popular culture, with an emphasis on photography and film. She is currently gathering material for a book on Nabokov's shallowness.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/