Postmodern and psychoanalytical approaches to Lolita
Summary :
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Postmodern and structuralist tendencies in Lolita
- Variety of levels of reality
- Humbert Humbert's reaction to a class roster
- Humbert Humbert's investigation of motel
- Modernism and postmodernism value
- Baudrillard's ideas concerning life
- Fundamental aspects of postmodernism
- The purely postmodern work
- Psychoanalytic theory in Lolita
- Humbert's complications
- Psychological complications of Humbert Humbert
- Lolita's abduction
- Conclusion
- Works cited
Abstract
Considering how multifaceted Vladimir Nabokov's lolita is, it is possible to apply to it a variety of literary theories, all more or less fruitfully. In this paper, I will consider the postmodern and the psychoanalytic approach. We will find that lolita is very much a postmodern text, despite having certain tendencies that direct the reader towards liberal humanism. Psychoanalytic theory will demonstrate the wealth of interpretations that this approach offers.
Postmodernism, which could also be named cultural and intellectual structuralism, eschews the belief in any concrete meaning or truth beyond the very subjective, and both the language and the narration of lolita are such that there does not seem to be any specific concrete truth or message that the novel is presenting. Instead, the reader is invited to see Humbert's life through his eyes and his eyes only. Nabokov's poetic language is, to a significant degree, what makes the subjectivity so much more convincing and paradoxically realistic than novels written in a superficially more direct and objective style.
We can observe postmodern and structuralist tendencies in lolita in the frequent occurrences of wordplay. Wordplay is most often encountered in reference to lolita's name, such as in the following examples: "I had only to turn away for a moment... and Lo and Behold, upon returning, I would find the former..." (Nabokov, 161-2) and "buy this very Lo a lollipop." (159) It is difficult to discern the specific meanings that instances of wordplay have in the novel, but they do entice the reader to try to understand.
Postmodernism, which could also be named cultural and intellectual structuralism, eschews the belief in any concrete meaning or truth beyond the very subjective, and both the language and the narration of lolita are such that there does not seem to be any specific concrete truth or message that the novel is presenting. Instead, the reader is invited to see Humbert's life through his eyes and his eyes only. Nabokov's poetic language is, to a significant degree, what makes the subjectivity so much more convincing and paradoxically realistic than novels written in a superficially more direct and objective style.
We can observe postmodern and structuralist tendencies in lolita in the frequent occurrences of wordplay. Wordplay is most often encountered in reference to lolita's name, such as in the following examples: "I had only to turn away for a moment... and Lo and Behold, upon returning, I would find the former..." (Nabokov, 161-2) and "buy this very Lo a lollipop." (159) It is difficult to discern the specific meanings that instances of wordplay have in the novel, but they do entice the reader to try to understand.
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Fedor Z.
Teacher of English as a second language
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