First published in 1995. This companion constitutes a virtual encyclopaedia of Nabokov, and occupies a unique niche in scholarship about him. Articles on individual works by Nabokov, including his short stories and poetry, provide a brief survey of critical reactions and detailed analyses from diverse vantage points. For anyone interested in Nabokov, from scholars to readers who love his works, this is an ideal guide. Its chronology of Nabokov's life and works, bibliographies of primary and secondary works, and a detailed index make it easy to find reliable information any aspect of Nabokov's rich legacy.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), the eminent Russian-American writer and intellectual, is best known for his novels, though he was also the author of plays, poems, and short stories. In this important new work, Paul D. Morris offers a comprehensive reading of Nabokov's Russian and English poetry, until now a neglected facet of his oeuvre. Morris' unique and insightful study re-evaluates Nabokov's poetry and demonstrates that poetry was in fact central to his identity as an author and was the source of his distinctive authorial - lyric - voice. After offering a critical overview of the multi-staged history of the reception of Nabokov's poetry and an extensive analysis of his poetic writing, Morris argues that Nabokov's poetry has largely been misinterpreted and its place in his oeuvre misunderstood. Through a detailed examination of the form and content of Nabokov's writings, Morris demonstrates that Nabokov's innovations in the realms of drama, the short story, and the novel were profoundly shaped by his lyric sensibility.
Conversations with Vladimir Nabokov brings together candid, revealing interviews with one of the twentieth century’s master prose writers. Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was a Russian American scientist, poet, translator, and professor of literature. Critics throughout the world celebrated him for developing the luminous and enigmatic style that advanced the boundaries of modern literature more than any author since James Joyce. In a career that spanned over six decades, he produced dozens of iconic works, including Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and his classic autobiography, Speak, Memory. The twenty-eight interviews and profiles in this collection were drawn from Nabokov’s numerous print and broadcast appearances over a period of nineteen years. Beginning with the controversy surrounding the American publication of Lolita in 1958, he offers trenchant, witty views on society, literature, education, the role of the author, and a range of other topics. He discusses the numerous literary and symbolic allusions in his work, his use of parody and satire, as well as analyses of his own literary influences. Nabokov also provided a detailed portrait of his life—from his aristocratic childhood in prerevolutionary Russia, education at Cambridge, apprenticeship as an émigré writer in the capitals of Europe, to his decision in 1940 to immigrate to the United States, where he achieved renown and garnered an international readership. The interviews in this collection are essential for seeking a clearer understanding of the life and work of an author who was pivotal in shaping the landscape of contemporary fiction.
The Velvet Butterfly is the third in a series of introductions to some of our major literary figures by the noted cultural journalist and foreign correspondent Alan Levy.
Whereas literary criticism has mainly oscillated between “the death of the author” (Barthes) and “the return of the author” (Couturier), this work suggests another perspective on authorship through an analysis of Nabokov’s prefaces. It is here argued that the author, being neither dead nor tyrannical, alternates between authoritative apparitions and receding disappearances in the double gesture of mastery without mastery which Derrida calls ‘exappropriation’, that is, a simultaneous attempt to appropriate one’s work, control it, have it under one’s power and expropriate it, losing control by loosening one’s grip. The intention of this is to approach, through one’s experience of reading and interpreting, the experience of self-effacement and impersonality pertaining to writing (cf. Blanchot). Prefaces are considered to be suitable places for the deconstruction of the classical image of Nabokov’s arrogance through the unearthing of his reserve and vulnerability. This work provides an account of the mere intuition (which, therefore, does not pretend to be a conclusive and definitive interpretation) of another image of Nabokov whose undeniable talent for deception seems in accordance with a need for discretion and secrecy.
A collection of short stories, a novel and excerpts from longer fiction, poetry, essays, and an excerpt from the autobiography of writer Vladimir Nabokov.
Vladimir Nabokov's extraordinary literary career, as a master of Russian and English prose, is unique. Acclaimed in the limited Russian emigre world, under the name of Sirin, Nabokov switched to writing in English and settled in America, a refugee from Hitler's Europe. Exile, memory, lost love and the magic of childhood are among his themes. Neil Cornwell's study, published for the Nabokov centenary, examines five of Nabokov's major novels, plus his short stories and critical writings, situating his work against the ever-expanding mass of VN scholarship, and noting his cultural debt to Russia, Europe, America and the British Isles.
The present volume has as its central aim a reassessment of the works of Ivan Turgenev for the twenty-first century. Against the background of a decline in interest in nineteenth-century literature the articles gathered here seek to argue that the period in general, and his work in particular, still have much to offer the modern sensibility. The volume also offers a great variety of approaches. Some of the contributors tackle major works by Turgenev, including Rudin and Smoke, while others address key themes that run through all his creative work. Yet others address his influence, as well as his broader relationship with Russian and other cultures. A final group of articles examines other key figures in Russian literary culture, including Belinskii, Herzen and Tolstoi. The work will therefore be of interest to students, postgraduates and specialists in the field of Russian literary culture. At the same time, they will stand as a tribute to the life and work of Professor Richard Peace, a long-standing specialist in nineteenth-century Russian literature, in whose honour the volume has been compiled.
