Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism)

Midway through the last century, Lolita burst on the literary scene—a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the New World. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject—the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl—was quickly upstaged by the critical attention it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays about Lolita . The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader topics and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it. Midway through the last century, Lolita burst on the literary scene--a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the New World. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject--the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl--was quickly upstaged by the critical attention it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays about Lolita. The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader topics and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it. Eight reprinted essays, mostly from the 1990s, examine various facets of the Russian exile's 1955 novel that has raised literary, legal, and religious hackles since it was first published. Also included is a 1967 interview with Nabokov by Herbert Gold. There is no index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR This volume comprises an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays that follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features of "Lolita" and then proceeding to broader issues and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other work of literature and art. THE PUBLICATION OF Lohta in America in 1958 caused a considerable stir.