Nabokov and Nietzsche

Nabokov and Nietzsche
Author: Michael Rodgers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501339583

Awarded the Jane Grayson Prize by the International Vladimir Nabokov Society Shortlisted for The European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Book Award Nabokov and Nietzsche: Problems and Perspectives addresses the many knotted issues in the work of Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita's moral stance, Pnin's relationship with memory, Pale Fire's ambiguous internal authorship – that often frustrate interpretation. It does so by arguing that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, as both a conceptual instrument and a largely unnoticed influence on Nabokov himself, can help to untie some of these knots. The study addresses the fundamental problems in Nabokov's writing that make his work perplexing, mysterious and frequently uneasy rather than simply focusing on the literary puzzles and games that, although inherent, do not necessarily define his body of work. Michael Rodgers shows that Nietzsche's philosophy provides new, but not always palatable, perspectives in order to negotiate interpretative impasses, and that the uneasy aspects of Nabokov's work offer the reader manifold rewards.

Nabokov and Nietzsche

Nabokov and Nietzsche
Author: Michael Rodgers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501339591

Nabokov and Nietzsche: Problems and Perspectives addresses the many knotted issues in the work of Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita's moral stance, Pnin's relationship with memory, Pale Fire's ambiguous internal authorship – that often frustrate interpretation. It does so by arguing that the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, as both a conceptual instrument and a largely unnoticed influence on Nabokov himself, can help to untie some of these knots. The study addresses the fundamental problems in Nabokov's writing that make his work perplexing, mysterious and frequently uneasy rather than simply focusing on the literary puzzles and games that, although inherent, do not necessarily define his body of work. Michael Rodgers shows that Nietzsche's philosophy provides new, but not always palatable, perspectives in order to negotiate interpretative impasses, and that the uneasy aspects of Nabokov's work offer the reader manifold rewards.

A Nietzschean Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's Fiction

A Nietzschean Analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's Fiction
Author: Michael Rodgers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

This thesis uses the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to explore and explain moral and literary problems in Vladimir Nabokov's works. Although a phalanx of 'Nabokov and X' studies exist, there remains no English-speaking work that focuses solely on the relationship between these two figures. This seems strange given their deep connection to the Russian Silver Age, Nabokov's frequent references and allusions to Nietzsche, and their thematic similarities. The many knotted issues in Nabokov studies - Lolita's relationship to morality, Pale Fire's internal authorship, Nabokov's relationship with his readership - often create impasses that frustrate interpretation. By breaking with traditional approaches in Nabokov studies; by 'answering back' to Nabokov rather than adhering to the conditions he suggested for reading his work, I demonstrate how a Nietzschean analysis can negotiate such interpretative stalemate and act as a fulcrum to problems in Nabokov's fiction. The study is divided into three sections, each with two chapters: 'Nietzschean Engagements', 'Nietzschean Readings' and 'Beyond Nietzsche'. The first section deals with Nabokov's more obvious points of contact with Nietzsche through allusions and references. 'Nietzschean Readings' looks at Nabokov's texts through the lens of Nietzschean philosophy, allowing us to frame certain literary problems differently. The last section describes how Nabokov moves away from Nietzsche - from respectful pupil to rebellious disciple. Each chapter of the thesis looks at existing problems in Nabokov's oeuvre and challenges the assumptions surrounding them. For the most part, this challenging is uncomfortable insofar as it asks readers to question, perhaps even doubt, the very mechanisms that they go about understanding literature. One of the main concerns running through the thesis is the insistence that such disconcertment is not only rewarding in respect to understanding Nabokov's works but also beneficial to the reader's capabilities.

Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism

Nabokov's Art of Memory and European Modernism
Author: John Burt Foster, Jr.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 1993-02-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400820898

Despite Vladimir Nabokov's hostility toward literary labels, he clearly recognized his own place in cultural history. In a fresh approach stressing Nabokov's European context, John Foster shows how this writer's art of memory intersects with early twentieth-century modernism. Tracing his interests in temporal perspective and the mnemonic image, in intertextual "reminiscences," and in individuality amid cultural multiplicity, the book begins with such early Russian novels as Mary, then treats his emerging art of memory from Laughter in the Dark to The Gift. After discussing the author's cultural repositioning in his first English novels, Foster turns to Nabokov's masterpiece as an artist of memory, the autobiography Speak, Memory, and ends with an epilogue on Pale Fire. As a cross-cultural overview of modernism, this book examines how Nabokov navigated among Proust and Bergson, Freud and Mann, and Joyce and Eliot. It also explores his response to Baudelaire and Nietzsche as theorists of modernity, and his sense of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin as modernist precursors. As an approach to Nabokov, the book reflects the heightened importance of autobiography in current literary study. Other critical issues addressed include Bakhtin's theory of intertextuality, deconstructive views of memory, Benjamin's modernism of memory, and Nabokov's assumptions about modernism as a concept.

Nabokov and the Question of Morality

Nabokov and the Question of Morality
Author: Michael Rodgers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2016-08-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137592214

The first collection to address the vexing issue of Nabokov’s moral stances, this book argues that he designed his novels and stories as open-ended ethical problems for readers to confront. In a dozen new essays, international Nabokov scholars tackle those problems directly while addressing such questions as whether Nabokov was a bad reader, how he defined evil, if he believed in God, and how he constructed fictional works that led readers to become aware of their own moral positions. In order to elucidate his engagement with aesthetics, metaphysics, and ethics, Nabokov and the Question of Morality explores specific concepts in the volume’s four sections: “Responsible Reading,” “Good and Evil,” “Agency and Altruism,” and “The Ethics of Representation.” By bringing together fresh insights from leading Nabokovians and emerging scholars, this book establishes new interdisciplinary contexts for Nabokov studies and generates lively readings of works from his entire career.

Dying for Time

Dying for Time
Author: Martin Hägglund
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674067843

Novels by Proust, Woolf, and Nabokov have been read as expressions of a desire to transcend time. Hägglund gives them another reading entirely: fear of time and death is generated by investment in temporal life. Engaging with Freud and Lacan, he opens a new way of reading the dramas of desire as they are staged in both philosophy and literature.

Bend Sinister

Bend Sinister
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 273
Release: 1990-04-14
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0679727272

The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, it is, first and foremost, a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the government attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.

Nabokov le nietzschéen

Nabokov le nietzschéen
Author: Anatoly Livry
Publisher: Editions Hermann
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2010
Genre: Literature
ISBN: 9782705670559

Vladimir Nabokov et Friedrich Nietzsche n'ont pas pour seul point commun d'avoir choisi la Suisse pour lieu d'exil volontaire, mais également celui d'avoir accepté l'Hellade et ses dieux comme inspirateurs principaux. Et s'il est un philosophe qui a influencé le romancier américain d'origine russe, c'est bien Nietzsche. L'essai d'Anatoly Livry le montre en soulignant, toujours au plus près des textes, les thématiques communes, les emprunts et les références. Il dessine ainsi un nouveau portrait de Nabokov. On le connaissait écrivain puriste et caustique, entomologiste, poète ou encore universitaire : le voici lecteur assidu d'Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra. Et notre regard sur son œuvre s'en trouve renouvelé.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky
Author: Jeff Love
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-11-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780810133945

After more than a century, the urgency with which the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche speaks to us is undiminished. Nietzsche explicitly acknowledged Dostoevsky’s relevance to his work, noting its affinities as well as its points of opposition. Both of them are credited with laying much of the foundation for what came to be called existentialist thought. The essays in this volume bring a fresh perspective to a relationship that illuminates a great deal of twentieth-century intellectual history. Among the questions taken up by contributors are the possibility of morality in a godless world, the function of philosophy if reason is not the highest expression of our humanity, the nature of tragedy when performed for a bourgeois audience, and the justification of suffering if it is not divinely sanctioned. Above all, these essays remind us of the supreme value of the questioning itself that pervades the work of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.