In a message dated 17/11/2005 18:58:32 GMT Standard Time, chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:
in particular, Lolita, the story of a middle-aged émigré scholar (again) with a desperate passion for a 12-year-old American girl.
Why is HH always described as middle-aged? He was born in 1910 and met the 12-year-old Lolita in 1947.
The same happens with Herr K. in Freud's "Dora" case, which I recently compared with "Lolita" in my anniversary seminar (100 years for "Dora", 50 for "Lolita"). Freud does not give K.'s age (my historical research shows that he and Dora were almost the same ages as HH and Lolita at the first molesting). But readers always assume, wrongly, and quite without evidence from Freud or elsewhere, that K. was "middle-aged", rather than his actual age of 35 or 36.
Is it somehow a little safer to think of these men as middle-aged, rather than, presumably, in the prime of sexual life?
Anthony Stadlen