Bibliographic title
Nabokov Upside Down
Publisher, city
Page(s)
280
Publication year
Abstract
Nabokov Upside Down brings together essays that explicitly diverge from conventional topics and points of reference when interpreting a writer whose influence on contemporary literature is unrivaled. Scholars from around the world here read Nabokov in terms of bodies rather than minds, belly-laughs rather than erudite wit, servants rather than master-artists, or Asian rather than Western perspectives. The first part of the volume is dedicated to surveys of Nabokov’s oeuvre that transform some long-held assumptions concerning the nature of and significance of his work.
Often thought of as among the most cerebral of artists, Nabokov comes across in these essays as profoundly aware of the physical world, as evidenced by his masterly representation of physical movement, his bawdy humor, and his attention to gustatory pleasure, among other aspects of his writing. The volume’s second half focuses on individual works or phases in Nabokov’s career, noting connections among them as well as to other fields of inquiry beyond literature. Engaged in conversation with each other and, in his editorial comments, with Brian Boyd, the essays in this volume show Nabokov scholarship continuing to renew itself.
TOC:
Brian Boyd: Introduction
Part 1 - Upside Down: Matter to Mind
Stephen H. Blackwell: Reflections on (and of) Trees in Nabokov
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney: Backward, Contrariwise, Downside Up: Thinking in Different Directions in Nabokov
Paul Benedict Grant: Belly and Brain, Mind and Matter: An Upside-Down Look at Nabokov’s Humor
Lara Delage-Toriel: Some Foodnotes to Nabokov’s Works
Monica Manolescu: “I Speak Like a Child”: Orality in Nabokov
Naomi Olson: Doubled Vision: Autoscopic Phenomena in Nabokov’s Fiction
Julian W. Connolly: Restoration or Regression? The Lure of the Past in Nabokov’s Fiction
Galya Diment: Masters and Servants: Upstairs and Downstairs in Nabokov
Dana Dragunoiu: On Pity and Courtesy in Nabokov’s Ethics
Part 2 - Right Way Round: Past to Future
Shun’ichiro Akikusa: Nabokov and Hearn: Where the Transatlantic Imagination Meets the Transpacific Imagination
Stanislav Shvabrin: “And If My Private Universe Scans Right . . .”: The Semantics of Meter in Nabokov’s Poetry—and Worldview
David Rampton: In Search of the Real Poet: Nabokov’s Pushkin Essay Revisited
Robert Alter: Nabokov for Those Who Hate Him: The Curious Case of Pnin
R. S. Gwynn: “My Poet’s Fiery Orb”: “Pale Fire” and Its Creative Context
Marijeta Bozovic: From Onegin to Ada: Nabokov and the Transnational Imperative
Yannicke Chupin: Turning the Myth Upside Down: From Humbert and Lo to Hubert and Flo, or, Reading the Particulars
Brian Boyd: Afterword