Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita » (New Edition)

Christine Clegg is Lecturer, University of East London.

In this Readers' Guide, Christine Clegg examines the critical history of Lolita through a broad range of interpretations. Although early criticism of the text polarized around 'that' question - is it literature or pornography? - the influence of American critics such as Lionel Trilling quickly secured canonical status for the novel. A compelling aspect of Lolita criticism is the way in which that question continues to return in different forms. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lolita has been the subject of diverse critical attention, beyond 'Nabokov Studies': from Richard Rorty's philosophical inquiry into the ethics of cruelty, to Rachel Bowlby's feminist analysis of the rhetoric of consumer culture in the novel. All of the main critical approaches to the novel are covered by this indispensable sourcebook.

NY Times Book Review Sunday, August 17, 1958 - Elizabeth Janeway

[Lolita's] illicit nature will both shock the reader into paying attention and prevent sentimentally false sympathy from distorting his judgment. Contrariwise, I believe, Mr. Nabokov is slyly exploiting the American emphasis on the attraction of youth and the importance devoted to the teen-ager in order to promote an unconscious identification with Humbert s agonies. Both techniques are entirely valid. But neither, I hope, will obscure the purpose of the device: namely, to underline the essential, inefficient, painstaking and pain-giving selfishness of all passion, all greed—of all urges, whatever they may be, that insist on being satisfied without regard to the effect their satisfaction has upon the outside world. Humbert is all of us.

'The Weird Shapes of Sexuality that Lolita Assumes': Art and Morality, Literature and Life; The Making of Lolita in the 1950s
• 'An Idealistic Obsession with the Never-to-be-had': Parody, Perversion and the Meaning of Style; Interpretations of Lolita in the 1960s
• 'The Manifold Recesses of Literary Possibility': Comparative Criticism of America's Lolita in the 1970s
• Nabokov's 'Monster of Incuriosity': Kindness, Cruelty, and the Ethics of Reading Lolita in the 1980s
• 'The Rediscovered Girl': Rereading Lolita in the 1990s