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Literary Analysis of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

This is not a typical love story, it offers a new perspective on pedophilia and makes the reader interpret the pedophilic nature in a completely different way than anyone is used to. .
             Lolita really was about America though and not just to do with Humbert's road tripping all over it with his Lolita but the whole story unfolds in relation to the setting and everything that America was offering its population at the time like the youth being heavily influenced by Hollywood and the evolving media. This idea almost pokes fun at how Lolita was received by everyone and the media. Within the story everyone is living through a time of colorful signs and a big change but when the book was published people remained against the change in literature and media that Lolita brought around by opposing and criticizing the story even though the story was just the surface of this literary masterpiece.
             It is the perverse nature of the love story and language that makes the over all story so compelling. The story on the surface is already so gripping that the controversial theme and perverse language makes it even more interesting and alluring to an audience. At the time of its publication it was such a new idea and people were regarding it as filth and demising it like porn as opposed to seeing it for the masterpiece and art it was. Lydia Kiesling writes in Pen America that if the book is dribble it's divine dribble. She's criticizing the reviews put fourth by others regarding the book as boring. Lydia see's the book for the art form it is "I would stammer that this novel is about art, not about a pedophile." (Lydia Kiesling, On Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita). It needs to be taken in to account she published her critique at a much more open minded time when the book is printed in full and Nabokov is a renowned author of the past rather than at the time of initial reception when it was unlike anything anyone had ever read before.


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1. Humbert Humbert's Manipulation in Lolita

... beloved, poet Edgar Allen Poe. Humbert calls himself Poe, and the name of his first, deceased, lover Annabel Leigh is taken, almost plagiarizingly, from the poem Annabel Lee by Poe. In the critical analysis Who Really Was Annabel Leigh the author states, "Annabel Leigh is part of the rhetorical devices used by the narrator to exculpate himself. In a way, she functions pretty much ... as do Laura and Beatrice mentioned as examples of desirable teenagers loved by poets (and H.H. is sure he is an artist ... like them)" (Thomieres 165). This allusion to Poe is supposed to somewhat endear th...

  • Word Count: 1826
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

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