Hi, Nabokov used the phrase "device" in his lectures on literature where he discusses Dickens' Bleak House. In my recently published book on Nabokov:( "Vladimir Nabokov: Bergsonian and Russian Formalist Influences in his novels") I discuss Nabokov's putative indebtedness to the Russian Formalist critics for whom the literary "device" was a touchstone. Viktor Shklovsky, one of the founders of the Formalist school himself published a very important article "Art as Device". As you will be aware, the Russian Formalists were fecund and innovative thinkers who ultimately gave rise to structuralism regards michael glynn