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.

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.

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.

Red Britain sets out a provocative rethinking of the cultural politics of mid-century Britain by drawing attention to the extent, diversity, and longevity of the cultural effects of the Russian Revolution. Drawing on new archival research and historical scholarship, this book explores the conceptual, discursive, and formal reverberations of the Bolshevik Revolution in British literature and culture. It provides new insight into canonical writers including Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Dorothy Richardson, H.G Wells, and Raymond Williams, as well bringing to attention a cast of less-studied writers, intellectuals, journalists, and visitors to the Soviet Union. Red Britain shows that the cultural resonances of the Russian Revolution are more far-reaching and various than has previously been acknowledged. Each of the five chapters takes as its subject one particular problem or debate, and investigates the ways in which it was politicised as a result of the Russian Revolution and the subsequent development of the Soviet state. The chapters focus on the idea of the future; numbers and arithmetic; law and justice; debates around agriculture and landowning; and finally orality, literacy, and religion. In all of these spheres, Red Britain shows how the medievalist, romantic, oral, pastoral, anarchic, and ethical emphases of English socialism clashed with, and were sometimes overwritten by, futurist, utilitarian, literate, urban, statist, and economistic ideas associated with the Bolshevik Revolution.

Significant German communities existed in Russia for three centuries until the Bolshevik revolution gradually extirpated their presence. These 18 papers explore a number of cultural influences that the German presence had on Russian letters, art, architecture, music, and other cultural pursuits. Spe.

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.

On Nabokov, Ayn Rand and the Libertarian Mind not only conjoins two seemingly divergent authors but also takes on the larger picture of libertarian trends and ideologies. These timely topics further intermingle with Bell-Villada’s own conflicted relationship – personal, cultural, satirical, literary – to the “odd pair” and their ways of thinking. The inclusion of Louis Begley’s essay adds yet another dimension to this unique, wide-ranging meditation on art and politics, history and memory.

While historical and political aspects of the Russo-German relationship over the past three to four centuries have received due attention from scholars, the range of the far more diverse, important, and peculiar cultural relations still awaits full assessment. This volume shows how enriching these cultural influences were for both countries, affecting many spheres of intellectual and daily life such as philosophy and religion, education and ideology, sciences and their application, arts and letters, custom and language. The German-Russian relationship has always been particularly intense. Oscillating as it has between infatuation and contempt, it has always been marked by a singular paradox: a German cultural presence in Russia resulting either in a more or less complete fusion, as in the case of Russifield German, or in a pronounced mutual repulsion, accompanied by the denigration of each other's culture as inferior. It is this curious paradox that determines the perspectives of the articles that were specially written for this volume, providing it with a unifying focus.

Shortly before Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions that the draft for his last novel, The Original of Laura, be destroyed. But in 2008 Dmitri Nabokov, the writer's only child and sole surviving heir, contravened his father's wishes. Formed from novelistic fragments that had been hidden from the public eye for three decades, The Original of Laura is a construction based on the conjecture of the Nabokov estate, publishers, and scholars. Shades of Laura returns to the "scene of the crime," elucidating the process of publishing Nabokov's unfinished novel from its conception - the reproduction of 138 handwritten index cards - to the simultaneous publication of translations of the final text in several languages. The essays in this collection investigate the event of publication and reconstitute the book's critical reception, reproducing a selection of some of the most salient reviews. Critics condemned Dmitri's choice, but as contributors to this volume attest, there are many more "shades" and "nuances" to his decision. The book also endeavours to allow readers to understand and evaluate an incomplete novel; contributors analyze its plot, structure, imagery, and motifs. Published after prolonged public debate, Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura was dubbed "the most eagerly awaited literary novel of this fledgling century." Covering the publication from a broad spectrum of perspectives, this collection reassesses the Nabokov canon and the roots of his literary prestige. Contributors include Paul Ardoin (Florida State University), Gennady Barabtarlo (University of Missouri), Brian Boyd (University of Auckland), Marijeta Bozovic (Colgate University), Maurice Couturier (University of Nice), Lara Delage-Toriel (Strasbourg University), Galya Diment (University of Washington), Leland de la Durantaye (Claremont McKenna College), Michael Juliar (Private collector), Eric Naiman (University of California, Berkeley), Ellen Pifer (University of Delaware), Anna Raffetto (Adelphi Publishing House, Milan), Michael Rodgers (University of Strathclyde), Rien Verhoef (Leiden University), Olga Voronina (Bard College), Tadashi Wakashima (Kyoto University), Michael Wood (Princeton University), and Barbara Wyllie (Slavonic and East European Review).