Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita A Casebook [Paperback]

Midway through the last century,Lolitaburst on the literary scene--a Russian exile's extraordinary gift to American letters and the New World. The scandal provoked by the novel's subject--the sexual passion of a middle-aged European for a twelve-year-old American girl--was quickly upstaged by the critical attention it received from readers, scholars, and critics around the world. This casebook gathers together an interview with Nabokov as well as nine critical essays aboutLolita. The essays follow a progression focusing first on textual and thematic features and then proceeding to broader topics and cultural implications, including the novel's relations to other works of literature and art and the movies adapted from it.

1. Introduction
2. The Art of Persuasion in Nabokov'sLolita: Nomi Tamir-Ghez
3. Parody and Authenticity inLolita: Thomas R. Frosch
4. Even Homais Nods : Nabokov's Fallibility, or How to ReviseLolita: Bryan Boyd
5. Nabokov's Novel Offspring:Lolitaand Her Kin: Ellen Pifer
6. So Nakedly Dressed : The Text of the Female Body in Nabokov's Novels: Jenefer Shute
7. Ballet Attitudes : Nabokov'sLolitaand Petipa'sThe Sleeping Beauty: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
8. Artist in Exile: The Americanization of Humbert Humbert: John Haegert
9.Lolitaand the Poetry of Advertising: Rachel Bowlby
10. RevisitingLolita[on film]: Michael Wood
11. Interview with Vladimir Nabokov: Herbert Gold

Pifer is to be congratulated for having pulled together a collection of essays that are all intensely concerned with ethical issues surroundingLolitaand its characters.... This anthology gives scholars and their students a valuable new tool for coming to terms with an extraordinary novel and the difficult feelings it evokes. --The Russian Review

Ellen Piferis Professor of English and Comparative Literature l##