Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

I. Controversy surrounding publication of Lolita.

I. Humbert Humbert's passion for Annabel Leigh as motivation.

II. Characterization: Humbert as art aesthetic; Quilty as sensible desire.

III. Humbert's recognition of what is lost in Lolita by his seduction of her.

V. Humbert's demonization of Lolita to assuage his guilt and complicity in her seduction.

VI. Nabokov's views of the novel with respect to charges of pornography.

VII. Humbert's resentment of Lolita's maturation.

IX. Nabokov's description of characters in his novels.

"I discovered in nature the non-utilitarian delights I sought in art. Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception."

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita created a maelstrom of controversy upon its publication. That is in those countries that permitted its publication. The novel about the middle-aged Humbert Humbert's complete fixation on teenage nymphet. The book was banned in the U.S. despite many critics, scholars and others finding the work a masterpiece of tragicomedy, not the pornographic, titillating read those opposed to its publication purported it to be. As critic Charles Rolo maintained in the September, 1958, Atlantic Monthly, "The nove

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(Nabokov, 1991, 310). Critics were split in their opinion of Lolita. While many saw it as brilliant art, others quickly deemed it irredeemable of any worthy values. As Amis Kingsley (1959) wrote, "There comes a point where the atrophy of moral sense, evident through this book, finally leads to dullness, fatuity and unreality" (1). Even many critics who found the book praiseworthy offered such praise couched in overall condemning tones. As the reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement wrote in 1959: Lolita is a markedly original book, with dozens of brilliant comic passages in it, but it may serve as a cautionary tale to those critics who in their worthy wish to attack the rigidities of modern censorship have been deceived into calling it a great novel (1). From the perspective of many other critics, artists and readers, Lolita is not pornography but exactly what the Times reviewer cautions it is not - great art. Humbert's predicament is viewed by the narrator himself as both comic and tragic. We see this is a variety of scenes. In one scene Dolores Haze asks her would-be new tenant what made him finally decided to take the place and Humbert replies it was the cherry pies. After just appreciating Lolita this line takes on

Category: Literature - V