Lolita at Large: De-Scripting Nabokov’s Notes

• In Event: Liberating Nabokov: From Critical Approaches to Textual Discoveries

Abstract

Although scholars have repeatedly broached the concept of liberation from Nabokov’s authorial perspective, the writer’s grip on how to critically approach his oeuvre remains strong: no biographical interpretations, no inquiries into unfinished work, no nosing among the manuscripts. This paper will challenge one of these injunctions by addressing the possibility of reading Lolita through the lens of Nabokov’s research notes and early drafts, a small handful of which is preserved in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Reorganizing these jottings into several thematic clusters leads to a series of investigations into – and, possibly, discoveries about – Lolita’s literary and biographic subtexts.

Author

• Olga Yurievna Voronina, Bard College