Nabokov and the Real World (eBook)

Between Appreciation and Defense

Robert Alter (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-21866-3 (ISBN)

Infos

From award-winning literary scholar Robert Alter, a masterful exploration of how Nabokov used artifice to evoke the dilemmas, pain, and exaltation of the human conditionAdmirers and detractors of Vladimir Nabokov have viewed him as an ingenious contriver of literary games, teasing and even outsmarting his readers through his self-reflexive artifice and the many codes and puzzles he devises in his fiction. Nabokov himself spoke a number of times about reality as a term that always has to be put in scare quotes. Consequently, many critics and readers have thought of him as a writer uninterested in the world outside literature. Robert Alter shows how Nabokov was passionately concerned with the real world and its complexities, from love and loss to exile, freedom, and the impact of contemporary politics on our lives.In these illuminating and exquisitely written essays, Alter spans the breadth of Nabokov's writings, from his memoir, lectures, and short stories to major novels such as Lolita. He demonstrates how the self-reflexivity of Nabokov's fiction becomes a vehicle for expressing very real concerns. What emerges is a portrait of a brilliant stylist who is at once serious and playful, who cared deeply about human relationships and the burden of loss, and who was acutely sensitive to the ways political ideologies can distort human values.Offering timeless insights into literature's most fabulous artificer, Nabokov and the Real World makes an elegant and compelling case for Nabokov's relevance today.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.3.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: absurdity • Ada, or Ardor • Alain Robbe-Grillet • Alfred Appel Jr. • Alliteration • Allusion • anagram • Annotated Lolita • anti-art • aphorism • Artifice • Autobiography • Bend Sinister • Bend Sinister (novel) • Bilingualism • Book • Brian Boyd • Calculation • Cataclysm (Dragonlance) • Character (arts) • Charles Kinbote • Concluding • Copyright • Criticism • Defamiliarization • Despair • Despair (novel) • edmund wilson • English novel • english poetry • Epigraph (literature) • evocation • exile • Farce • Fiction • fictional universe • Galley slave • Genre • Humour • Illustration • Imagery • In Search of Lost Time • Invitation to a Beheading • John Shade • John Updike • Joseph Andrews • King, Queen, Knave • Knave (magazine) • Laughter in the Dark • Laughter in the Dark (novel) • Lecture • Lectures on Literature • lepidopterist • Literariness • literary style • Literature • Lolita • Madame Bovary • Marcel Proust • Mary • Memory • Metaphor • Modern fiction • modernism • Nabokov biographies • Nabokov the American Years • Nabokov the Russian Years • Narcissism • Narration • narrative • Neverland • Novel • novelist • Only Words (book) • Original Laura • Pale Fire • Paragraph • Parody • Perversion • Pnin • Poet • Poetry • preface • Princeton University Press • Prose • Protagonist • Pseudonym • Psychoanalysis • Publication • Quibble (plot device) • Quotation mark • Real Life of Sebastian Knight • resentment • Rhyme • Russia • Satire • sensibility • Sentimental Education • sentimentality • seriousness • simile • simulacrum • Solipsism • Speak, Memory • Stories of Vladimir Nabokov • Style • Superiority (short story) • The Defense • the Eye • The Gift • The Other Hand • The Real Life of Sebastian Knight • The Various • Totalitarianism • Transparent Things • T. S. Eliot • Unreliable Narrator • V. • Viktor Shklovsky • Virginia Woolf • Vladimir Nabokov • Vocation (poem) • Walter Benjamin • Writer • Writing • Zembla (magazine)
• ISBN-10: 0-691-21866-8 / 0691218668
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-21866-3 / 9780691218663