Matt Roth: "I am torn as to whether what follows is a true allusion or just a wicked Nabokovian coincidence. Readers of Lolita will remember the Farlows’ dogs, Cavall and Melampus. Brian Boyd has nicely unpacked this reference to the hunting dogs of King Arthur and Actaeon, but perhaps VN had also in mind an equally brief appearance by Melampus in another work. Here is how the plot of that work, a 12th century profane play entitled Babio, has been described by a recent critic:
“Babio loves his step-daughter Viola (Petula’s daughter) with a repressed passion—only to see Viola abducted by a richer and more powerful man. . . . Later, Babio laments the “violation” of Viola by another man, when he, Babio, had so carefully brought her up for his own delight.” –Laura Kendrick, Chaucerian Play...If, by the way, this is not an allusion, it is at least another splendid example of how one may get a decent education simply by studying closely one of VN’s books.

JM: I couldn't agree more with Matt Roth when he observes that "one may get a decent education simply by studying closely one of VN's books." His posting about the profane play Babio is another of his great finds. If we extended certain words from "Lolita" to "Ada" we might find another reverberation of this play in Nabokov's reference to "a triple viol."

PS: Searching the VN-List, with its Google-search short-cut, to reach former entries related to Melampus, I got two interconnected messages.

Unfortunately I was unable to retrieve the link corresponding to the date of the messages to situate them in the general archive (it often irks me that the reproductions are incompletely rendered)

1. Alain Didider Machu: "In the small community of Ramsdale, there's more than one detail that indicates the myth of the Byronian hero. Byron's two dogs, Cavall and Melampus make their appearance... although they belong to the mediocre Jean Farlow". Various other links between Humbert Humbert and the development of the Romantic movement (as Nabokov outlined in his notes in EO), linking him from King Arthur's Quest towards to Lord Byron, Wordsworth, Poe are outlined, in a fascinating article by Didider-Machu. Unfortunately I could only gain access to it in French and difficult to quote in English (JM).
Cf. Prof. Didier Machu, Universite de Pau : Un heros romantique : Humbert Humbert ; ... 'Bad, mad, and dangerous to know : la formule lapidaire en laquelle Byron fut caracterise par Caroline Lamb, ... anglais.u-paris10.fr/IMG/pdf/H_H-_ROMANTIQUE.pdf [ fr 1-day symposium 16 janvier 2010. organizer A-M Paquet-Deyris, Universite de paris Ouest Nanterre.
...[there is] an old note in "The Nabokovian" mentioning both dogs and their Greek source, but could not find it to quote here ( if A.Bouazza would be so kind to help me here?). I also checked in Brian Boyd, Lolita: What We Know and What We Don't , paru dans Cycnos, Volume 24 n1, mis en ligne le 20 mars 2008, URL : http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1079. but the link with Byron is not mentioned. Is there a copy of Prof. Didier Machu's article on "Humbert as a Romantic Hero" available in English? My investigatory powers are very limited and any help would be welcome text/html - LISTSERV 16.0 - NABOKV-L Archives

2. A.Bouazza brings the link to Brian Boyd's article tracking down the mythological dogs: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-art-of-literature-and-the-science-of-literature/ and adds: "My note [ "Lord Byron's Pack" (1993)] appeared in the Fall issue of 1994 and not 1993, a correction I owe to Brian."...I hadn't realized that Bouazza's note bore "Lord Byron's pack" in its title, circling nicely back to Didier Machu's article. What has pleased me in particular in Prof. Machu's text is the way he developped Nabokov's own ennumeration about the evolutionary process of the Romantic idea to situate,historically, Pushkin's EO as a "Romantic Epic."

In 2008, http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1079, Brian Boyd writes: "In fact Cavall is indeed not only Arthur's favorite hound (as in Tennyson's Idylls of the King),but the first of his hounds to turn the stag, in a hunting episode in The Mabinogion, and Melampus is the name of the first hound of Actaeon, in Ovid's telling of the story of Diana and Actaeon in Ovid's Metamorphoses, III....The precision of these allusions startles: two hounds from very different literary traditions that are the first to chase or turn a stag. Like the other ironies around the word "Waterproof," the precision itself makes us want to annotate more, and to expect more. And there is more, and it will connect with central elements of Lolita.Actaeon, remember, is the hunter who spies Diana, the virgin goddess of hunting, naked. Diana, enraged, turns him into a stag, and his hounds pursue him, Melampus leading, and tear him to pieces."

Also in 2008, http://www.theamericanscholar.org/the-art-of-literature-and-the-science-of-literature/ when Boyd writes"Even if we track down Cavall and Melampus, and link them to the Enchanted Hunters, and through Cavall as King Arthur's dog link to the Arthurian pattern that Nabokov seems to have attached from the first to the Lolita theme, I am not satisfied with what we can interpret of either the Enchanted Hunters or the Arthurian (and Merlinesque) pattern. Nabokov's patterns have powerful implications, once we trace them far enough, and in the case of Lolita I don't think I or anyone else has yet reached that point."
It strikes me that, in both articles, the connection between the two names and Lord Byron's dogs is missing. Inspite of Nabokov's ingenious patterning and contrapunctal genius what, for Boyd, are "startling allusions" that approach "two hounds from very different literary traditions", if they are admittedly derived from a reference to Byron's pack, must be first creditted to Byron. (JM) text/plain - LISTSERV 16.0 - NABOKV-L Archives