wee_ragamuffin
10-06-2011, 11:25 PM
Hello all. I'm new to this forum and thought I'd pop my thread cherry with a request for some scholarly help;
I'm currently writing a dissertation on Nabokov, exploring madness within his oeuvre, and am wondering if any of you kind people know of some decent sources I could peruse. I've already had a look at Nina Allan's book Madness, Death and Disease in the Fiction of Vladimir Nabokov - which, quite frankly, was a bit crap - Julian Connolly's essay 'Delusions or Clairvoyance? A Second Look at Madness in Nabokov's Fiction' and Jacqueline Hamrit's essay on 'Signs and Symbols' translated from French - but so far that's all I can find that specifically deals with the theme in Nabokov. I believe Connolly wrote another essay on madness (hence his 'Second Look'), but have been unable to locate the journal, I believe it's in Delta no.17 although my wonderful academic institution tells me it doesn't exist.
Also, in one part of the dissertation I'm proposing that the reader of Nabokov (at least, the analytic one) can be likened to a 'Nabokovian madman'; in particular, the son in 'Signs and Symbols', since the reader is crippled by silence and spends his time desperately trying to decode the 'undulation of things' (I'm using parts of Hamrit's essay to back that up, and a bit of Derrida and Foucault as well, just for giggles). Is that a ridiculous supposition? And has anyone else argued a similar point?
Thanks,
wee_ragamuffin
I'm currently writing a dissertation on Nabokov, exploring madness within his oeuvre, and am wondering if any of you kind people know of some decent sources I could peruse. I've already had a look at Nina Allan's book Madness, Death and Disease in the Fiction of Vladimir Nabokov - which, quite frankly, was a bit crap - Julian Connolly's essay 'Delusions or Clairvoyance? A Second Look at Madness in Nabokov's Fiction' and Jacqueline Hamrit's essay on 'Signs and Symbols' translated from French - but so far that's all I can find that specifically deals with the theme in Nabokov. I believe Connolly wrote another essay on madness (hence his 'Second Look'), but have been unable to locate the journal, I believe it's in Delta no.17 although my wonderful academic institution tells me it doesn't exist.
Also, in one part of the dissertation I'm proposing that the reader of Nabokov (at least, the analytic one) can be likened to a 'Nabokovian madman'; in particular, the son in 'Signs and Symbols', since the reader is crippled by silence and spends his time desperately trying to decode the 'undulation of things' (I'm using parts of Hamrit's essay to back that up, and a bit of Derrida and Foucault as well, just for giggles). Is that a ridiculous supposition? And has anyone else argued a similar point?
Thanks,
wee_ragamuffin