納博可夫的《羅麗泰》游走於各文類之間，看似相反的詮釋卻得以並存，進而營造出一種不確定性美學。本論文旨在探討納博可夫的書寫策略以及文本中的各種不確定性。 第一章為概論，援引德希達的理論說明「不確定性」。第二章簡介後設小說的歷史與定義，檢視文本中後設與寫實元素的並存，並藉羅蘭巴特的理論說明可寫性的文本。此外，也以文中例證分析寫實元素以及《羅麗泰》既是童話故事也是諧擬童話故事。第三章進一步說明小說中種種二元對立並存的現象：道德性/不道德性；精神分析式閱讀/嘲諷精神分析；以及故事起源的不確定性。文中的反身性，作者現身以及雙重性俱使道德與不道德間的分野更模糊難辨。羅蘭巴特的文本歡愉恰與納博可夫視藝術為美學至喜的觀點吻合，而《羅麗泰》小說中的美學至喜也形成一種超越世俗定義的超道德。第四章分析《羅麗泰》跨越不同文類的特殊風格，而瀰漫書中的「不確定性美學」使其同時是(一)懺悔錄/諧擬懺悔錄；(二)偵探小說/諧擬偵探小說；(三)喜劇/悲劇；(四)羅曼史/諧擬羅曼史。第五章則是結論：《羅麗泰》小說中的不確定性美學開啟了嶄新的閱讀體驗，讀者得以游走於不同詮釋間，並在閱讀中創造文本的意義。 / Nabokov's Lolita is a text that oscillates around the border between genres. In a close reading of Lolita, readers frequently find a condition of undecidability. This thesis investigates Nabokov’s textual strategy of playing in the boundaries between many genres, and by extension between a series of binary oppositions; and also how the narrative style repeatedly produces moments where the reader could decide to interpret either one way or another way, leading readers continually into a kind of either/or, both/and, neither/nor interpretive dilemma—what I will call an aesthetics of undecidability. Chapter One is an overall introduction to the study, and I refer to Jacques Derrida’s idea of undecidability. In Chapter Two, I explore the binary opposition between metafiction/straightforward storytelling in Lolita. In addition to the history and naming of metafiction, I also analyze Catherine Belsey’s interrogative text and Roland Barthes’ readable (lisible)/writable (scriptible) text. As for the realistic elements of the novel, I dissect textual evidence in Lolita and the undecidability between fairy tale/parody of fairy tale. The coexistence of metafictional and realistic elements is also a part of the undecidability in the text. Chapter Three is about three distinct yet interrelated textual aspects of undecidability: morality versus immorality in Lolita, the undecidability between psychoanalytic reading versus parody of psychoanalysis, and the undecidability of the text’s originality versus its borrowing from a previous short story titled “Lolita” by Heinz von Lichberg. These three critical issues are further complicated by the reflexivity, authorial presence, and the doubleness in Lolita that make it even more difficult to see the text simply as moral or immoral. Taken together, the resulting complexity and sophistication of the aesthetic style enables an active reading experience or what Barthes’ called the “text of bliss”—which coincidently corresponds to Nabokov’s definition of true art as “aesthetic bliss,” and the bliss in Lolita makes it a text that contains a kind of morality. Chapter Four examines additional cases of undecidability between confession/parody of confession, detective story/parody of detective story, comic elements/tragic elements, and romance/parody of romance. Again these are distinct yet interrelated issues of ambiguity, but my purpose is to show that a style of undecidability pervades the novel in many ways. And Chapter Five is the conclusion of this thesis: the aesthetics of undecidability makes Lolita a text that resists a one-sided reading. I hope that my thesis might explain why different readers of Lolita have opposite readings.

In Lolita, Humbert is obsessed with the 12-year-old Lolita. It is a vulgar and disturbing story which raises questions about morality and ethics. With a sophisticated and elegant narrative, Humbert manages to draw attention to language rather than to his actions. Through fancy prose style Humbert covers up and hides his horrible actions. His verbal game serves to manipulate his readers to accept Humbert´s feelings and actions and sympathize with him.  Humbert´s narration is very persuasive and the reader is easily fooled to concentrate on what he says rather than what he does. In this essay deconstructive method is used to analyse Lolita. The study shows how binary oppositions are used in Lolita and what effect they have on the reader´s comprehension of the text. The study presents a number of incongruities in Humbert´s telling of the story and therefore the essay argues that Humbert cannot be trusted with the telling of his tale.

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This thesis examines the competing frameworks in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—the fictional Foreword written by John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and the manuscript written by Humbert Humbert—in order to understand to what extent the construction manipulates the rhetorical appeal. While previous scholarship isolates the two narrators or focuses on their unreliability, my examination concentrates on the interplay of the frameworks and how their conflicting objectives can be problematic for readers. By drawing upon various theories by Michel Foucault from Power/Knowledge and Louis Althusser’s “On Ideology,” I look into how John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. and Humbert Humbert use authoritative voices to directly address readers with a specific duty, as “parents, social workers, educators” and “ladies of the gentleman,” and I question to what extent this can force readers to unwillingly forfeit their authority in order to adopt an alternative disciplinary gaze in pursuit of a premeditated idea of truth and justice. Using the concept of truth and justice, I explore how psychological discourse and the court are made up of ideologies that operate like the Panopticon, and I question where readers fit despite the strong influence exerted on to them by this structure.

This thesis examines the debate between morality and aesthetics that is outlined by Nabokov in Lolita’s afterword. Incorporating a discussion of Lolita’s critical history in order to reveal how critics have chosen a single, limited side of the debate, either the moral or aesthetic, this thesis seeks to expose the complexities of the novel where morality and aesthetics intersect. First, the general moral and aesthetic features of Lolita are discussed. Finally, I address the two together, illustrating how Lolita cannot be categorized as immoral, amoral, or didactic. Instead, it is through the juxtaposition of form and content, parody and reality, that the intersection of aesthetics and morality appears, subverting and repudiating the voice of its own narrator and protagonist, evoking sympathy for an appropriated and abused child, and challenging readers to evaluate their own ethical boundaries.

By investigating the discursive rules of hermeneutics and diagnosis, this study seeks to problematize particular presuppositions—most notably the presupposition of sense—of the modern disciplinary hermeneutic context. Following Barthes's consideration of the Greek modus of the middle voice as a useful notion in conceptualizing the modern scene of writing, the study advances itself toward conceptualizing a configuration of the modern reading scene in its middle-voiced permutation. In such a scene, the moment a reading attempts to read itself from without its parameters, it arrives at a spatial and temporal crisis (from the Greek krin-ein; to decide) between its action and the place (of not sense and not not sense) which exceeds the parameters delimiting the action of reading itself, but which nevertheless conditions its possibility. The grammar of this crisis is the middle voice; its condition, in the context of this study, is configured as madness. Madness is thus configured as a function of interrogation, reading and diagnosis. At the nucleus of the modem reading scene itself, this thesis opens with an introduction of the terms middle voice, crisis and madness, and then offers a consideration of three permutations of reading: Chapter Two, Chapter Three and the space between. Chapter Two considers a fictional representation of writing in the middle voice through a reading of Nabokov's Lolita, a text of fiction in the form of a "mad writer's" diary, whose historical reception has been marked by acts of appropriative censorship and clinical diagnosis. Chapter Three considers a permutation of the middlevoiced reading through a reading of Gertrude Stein's lectures on writing. This consideration is framed by fragments from the writing of Maurice Blanchot, connecting reading (as conceived by Stein) to madness, figuring the convergence of reading and madness in writing. The Interchapter, between chapters Two and Three, is an aporetic space entitled "Madness Itself." By allowing a brief and partial view of the modem clinical psychiatric setting, and by calling into question the parameters of the surrounding "chapters" themselves, this section seeks to perform, structurally and thematically, a moment of crisis recalling the middle voice.

By investigating the discursive rules of hermeneutics and diagnosis, this study seeks to problematize particular presuppositions—most notably the presupposition of sense—of the modern disciplinary hermeneutic context. Following Barthes's consideration of the Greek modus of the middle voice as a useful notion in conceptualizing the modern scene of writing, the study advances itself toward conceptualizing a configuration of the modern reading scene in its middle-voiced permutation. In such a scene, the moment a reading attempts to read itself from without its parameters, it arrives at a spatial and temporal crisis (from the Greek krin-ein; to decide) between its action and the place (of not sense and not not sense) which exceeds the parameters delimiting the action of reading itself, but which nevertheless conditions its possibility. The grammar of this crisis is the middle voice; its condition, in the context of this study, is configured as madness. Madness is thus configured as a function of interrogation, reading and diagnosis. At the nucleus of the modem reading scene itself, this thesis opens with an introduction of the terms middle voice, crisis and madness, and then offers a consideration of three permutations of reading: Chapter Two, Chapter Three and the space between. Chapter Two considers a fictional representation of writing in the middle voice through a reading of Nabokov's Lolita, a text of fiction in the form of a "mad writer's" diary, whose historical reception has been marked by acts of appropriative censorship and clinical diagnosis. Chapter Three considers a permutation of the middlevoiced reading through a reading of Gertrude Stein's lectures on writing. This consideration is framed by fragments from the writing of Maurice Blanchot, connecting reading (as conceived by Stein) to madness, figuring the convergence of reading and madness in writing. The Interchapter, between chapters Two and Three, is an aporetic space entitled "Madness Itself." By allowing a brief and partial view of the modem clinical psychiatric setting, and by calling into question the parameters of the surrounding "chapters" themselves, this section seeks to perform, structurally and thematically, a moment of crisis recalling the middle voice. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

La preadolescente no tuvo una iconografía propia en el arte hasta mediados del siglo XVIII, cuando se originó un concepto de infancia como estado biológico humano diferente al adulto. Durante el siglo XIX en Inglaterra, la imagen infantil y en concreto la de "las niñas", se desarrolló notablemente a través de la literatura, la pintura, la ilustración y la naciente fotografía. El fenómeno cultural, casi obsesivo, de la imagen infantil por parte de numerosos intelectuales y artistas victorianos como John Everett Millais o Lewis Carroll, se vino a llamr "Culto por las niñas", que las dotaba de una naturaleza inocente, pura e idealizada, pero por otro lado, les otorgaba misterio y perversidad. A partir del siglo XX hasta la actualidad, las artes y los medios de masas tomarían la imagen preadolescente generada durante la etapa victoriana como base para la construcción de diversos iconos y estereotipos de la feminidad infantil, como la inocente ambigua Shirley Temple en el cine de la década de 1930, las provocadoras escenas con niñas desnudas del pintor Balthus, la concreción de un icono femenino de naturaleza sensual y nínfica con nombre propio a través de la novela Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov, y la repercusión de éste, sobre todo en la última década, en manifestaciones artísticas y visuales como el manga japonés o la pornografía infantil en Internet. / Silvestre Marco, M. (2007). La imagen de la preadolescente y su representación en el arte [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/1961