Nabokov's Novels in English - Softcover

Maddox, Lucy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820334898 ISBN 13: 9780820334899

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 2010

Synopsis

Lucy Maddox’s sensitive treatment of Nabokov’s eight finished novels written in English―Pale Fire, Ada, Lolita, Bend Sinister, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Transparent Things, Look at the Harlequins! and Pnin―approaches the novelist’s work as significant fiction with its own integrity. Maddox provides the kind of discursive introduction that makes Nabokov’s complex work more accessible, focusing on the relationship between the eccentric, artificial structures of the novels and their deeply traditional, humanistic themes.

While the forms of the novels are idiosyncratic and often bizarre, says Maddox, the texts themselves are neither unfamiliar nor eccentric. Repeatedly the text is the frustration of desire or loss, which is for Nabokov the most agonizing and inescapable of human experiences. Maddox also traces through all eight novels the development of Nabokov’s style, which she treats as a matter of both technique and vision.

About this title

About the Author:

LUCY MADDOX is a professor in the department of English at Georgetown University. She is the author of several books including Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs and Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race, and Reform.

Review:

[An] excellent critical study . . . Nabokov’s Novels in English is an elegant and graceful contribution to Nabokov scholarship, and both Slavists and non-Slavists are equally in Maddox’s debt.

(Slavic and East European Journal)

Maddox is thoroughly familiar with Nabokov’s Russian writings (she makes especially good use of that key text, The Gift), but her chosen theme is one which is central to his production. . . . The literary subtexts are deftly and expertly exposed and the moral and aesthetic issues subtly highlighted.

(Modern Language Review)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0820334898
• ISBN 13: 9780820334899
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192