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.
Spis treści
Introduction: Nabokov’s Morality Play, Michael Rodgers and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney.- Responsible Reading: “And So the Password Is—?”: Nabokov and the Ethics of Rereading, Tom Whalen.- Nabokov and Dostoevsky: Good Writer, Bad Reader?, Julian Connolly.- The Will to Disempower? Nabokov and His Readers, Michael Rodgers.- Good and Evil: Nabokov’s God; God’s Nabokov, Samuel Schuman.- By Trial and Terror, Gennady Barabtarlo.- The Aesthetics of Moral Contradiction in Some Early Nabokov Novels, David Rampton.- Agency and Altruism: Loving and Giving in Nabokov’s The Gift, Jacqueline Hamrit.- Kinbote’s Heroism, Laurence Piercy.- The Ethics of Representation: Whether Judgments, Sentences, and Executions Satisfy the Moral Sense in Nabokov, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney.- The Art of Morality, or on Lolita, Leland de la Durantaye.- “Obnoxious Preoccupation with Sex Organs”: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Representing Sex, Elspeth Jajdelska.- Modern Mimesis, Michael Wood.- Notes on Contributors.- Index
O autorze
Michael Rodgers is a Teaching Assistant at the University of Strathclyde, UK, where he completed his Ph D dissertation on the relationship between Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction and Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. He is currently researching the idea of uncomfortable humor in twentieth-century literature.
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, USA. The author of over thirty essays on Nabokov, she was twice elected president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and currently coedits NABOKV-L, the Vladimir Nabokov Electronic Forum. She also publishes widely on American literature, detective fiction, and narrative theory.
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