Portant sur la période de tensions politiques extrêmes 1937-1982, la thèse propose de considérer autrement le statut de la traduction à partir des œuvres d’Aragon, de Landolfi et de Nabokov, écrivains et traducteurs de Pouchkine. Discutant et prolongeant la pensée d’Henri Meschonnic, ce travail défend, à travers le cas exemplaire de ces écrivains-traducteurs, l’existence de liens étroits entre le contexte, l’écriture et la traduction. Après une présentation des trois circuits éditoriaux principaux de la période, le face à face entre le traducteur et les forces politiques est étudié. L’analyse du corpus de traduction permet de révéler la grande activité d’Aragon, de Landolfi et de Nabokov sur la période considérée. Il s’agit ensuite de réfléchir aux modalités des échanges éditoriaux Est-Ouest en s’intéressant notamment aux anthologies et aux retraductions. La question de l’historicité des traductions de Pouchkine conduit à revenir au contexte. L’étude révèle que les communistes comme les capitalistes refusent de prendre en compte véritablement l’expérience du mal absolu que résume le nom d’Auschwitz. En guise de réponse, le littéralisme, souvent affiché durant la Guerre froide, a eu l’ambition de prendre en compte la volonté de l’auteur disparu. Le choix de traduire Pouchkine entend également apporter une réponse à la division du monde. Pouchkine questionne le face à face dans ses œuvres, le poète russe affrontant ainsi la question du mal tout en proposant une écriture morale. La dernière partie de ce travail défend l’idée d’une continuité entre l’activité de traduction et l’œuvre des écrivains. Elle montre combien le nom, la figure, les œuvres de Pouchkine nourrissent le travail d’Aragon, de Landolfi et de Nabokov. Elle propose enfin de considérer d’une autre manière la prose poétique, la parodie et l’histoire littéraire. / Focusing on the extreme political tensions during the 1937-1982 time span, this work suggests that the status of translation can be considered from a different angle based on the works of Aragon, of Landolfi and of Nabokov, writers and translators of Pushkin. Studying the examples of those writers and translators, discussing and expanding upon the theory of Henri Meschonnic, this work defends the idea that close links exist between context, writing and translation. The three main translation circuits of the period are initially presented introducing the study of the confrontation between the translators and the political forces. A closer look at the corpus of translations shows the important activity of Aragon, Landolfi and Nabokov at that period. The third part of this work concentrates on the ways of editing translations of Russian literature in the West through the study of anthologies of translations and retranslations. The historical character of the translations of Pushkin’s works leads to reconsider their links to the context. The study reveals that Communists and Capitalists refused to actually take into account the Evil experience that the name “Auschwitz” summarizes. In response, on a literary level, literalism promoted by Aragon, Landolfi and Nabokov during the Cold War has for vocation the respect of the will of the deceased author. The decision to translate Pushkin also represents a reaction to the division of the world. The Russian poet questions the conflict in his works and does not refuse to confront the question of Evil through a literary style based on morals. The final section of this thesis promotes the idea of continuity between the translations and the other works of Aragon, of Landolfi and of Nabokov. It demonstrates to what extent the name, the figure and the works of Pushkin influenced those writers and translators. Finally, poetic prose, parody and literary history are reconsidered from an entirely new angle.

Écrite d’abord en russe puis en anglo-américain, l’œuvre romanesque de Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), écrivain américain d’origine russe, fascine ses lecteurs, mais leur participation à l’achèvement de cette œuvre artistique a été singulièrement restreinte par sa réception. La publication de Lolita (1955) le transforme en précurseur du postmodernisme américain. Aboutissement de la quête moderne de l’autonomie de l’art et triomphe de l’autotélisme artistique, sa création se trouve alors interprétée en poétique « tyrannique » sur laquelle règne l’auteur en « dictateur absolu ». Vladimir Nabokov, pourtant, n’a cessé d’identifier dans l’Histoire et de combattre dans son œuvre deux questions politiques du vingtième siècle : celle de la soumission de l’art à l’idéologie (quelle qu’en soit le nom) et celle de la tyrannie (actualisée par les régimes politiques nazi et soviétique). Dès l’origine, sa création de langue russe, puis anglo-américaine, est synchronisée avec les conséquences, tant en Russie qu’en Occident, de la Révolution bolchevique, l’événement historique qui change le « partage du sensible » (Jacques Rancière) vingtiémiste. La nature autotélique de sa création, dont les caractéristiques sont à redéfinir en opposition aux formes artistiques prônant l’engagement de l’art, indique en réalité que Nabokov propose une nouvelle « politique de la littérature » (Jacques Rancière) de l’émancipation qu’il a lui-même appelée du nom de « démocratie magique » et fait d’elle un « art critique » dont l’effet politique passe par sa distance esthétique, incluant « dans la forme de l’œuvre la confrontation de ce que le monde est avec ce que le monde pourrait être » (Jacques Rancière). / Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), American writer of Russian origin, was the author of fiction written first in Russian and then in American English. His work has been a constant source of fascination for his readers, but their interpretation has been limited by its reception. Upon the publication of Lolita (1955), Nabokov is seen as a precursor of American postmodernism. His writings are interpreted as the climax of the modernist quest for artistic autonomy and a triumph of autotelic creation, and a poetic of “tyranny” is identified in his work, with the author reigning supreme as an “absolute dictator.”However, Nabokov had never ceased to be preoccupied with two political issues in 20th century History, which he continuously denounced in his writings: the issue of the submission of art to any kind of ideology and that of tyranny illustrated by the Nazi and Soviet political regimes. From the very beginning of his career, in his Russian texts and later in his American texts, Nabokov’s work examines the consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution, seen as the historical event that changes the “distribution of the sensible” (J. Rancière) in the 20th century. The autotelic nature of his work, whose features should be defined in opposition to aesthetic forms that celebrate the commitment of art, actually indicates that Nabokov defines a new “politics of literature” (J. Rancière) based on emancipation, which Nabokov calls “a magic democracy” and considers to be a “critical art” whose aesthetic effect is predicated on its distance, thus including “in the form of the work the confrontation between what the world is and what the world may become” (J. Rancière).

In Queering Nabokov: Postmoderne Zeitlichkeiten und Erotik in Ada, oder Ardor nähert sich Nathalia Saliba Dias dem Spätwerk Vladimir Nabokovs aus der Perspektive der Queer-Theorie und der Queer-Zeitlichkeiten, um eine bestimmte Kombination von Themen zu untersuchen: die Überschneidung von postmodernen Zeitlichkeiten, Verspieltheit und Erotik. Nabokovs Umgang mit der Zeit wurde oft mit der Suche der Moderne nach Transzendenz und Zeitlosigkeit in Verbindung gebracht und im Lichte von Marcel Proust und Henri Bergson interpretiert. In Ada, oder Ardor (1969) jedoch stellt Nabokov alternative Formen der Zeitlichkeit, die historisch als weiblich und seltsam identifiziert werden (wie Rhythmus und Textur), im Gegensatz zu Linearität, Uhr und Kalenderzeit, die oft mit männlicher Zeit assoziiert werden. Darüber hinaus beschreibt Nabokov die Erinnerungen der Figur als ein sexuelles Ereignis und manipuliert historisches Material (Fotos, Dias, Bücher usw.) als sexuelle Objekte. Er sexualisiert auch seine Beziehung zu anderen Autoren in der Komposition des Romans und verwandelt die Literaturgeschichte in eine homoerotische und frauenfeindliche Beziehung. Schließlich sexualisiert Nabokov seine literarische Familie und seine literarischen Mittel, insbesondere die Parodie, indem er das Material anderer in seinen eigenen Schriften auf abartige Weise "einfügt", "durchdringt" und "manipuliert". Das zentrale Argument dieser Arbeit ist, dass Nabokov in Ada, oder Ardor schließlich einen spielerischen Umgang mit der Zeit (reflektierende Nostalgie) als verkörperte und sexuelle Erfahrung in den Mittelpunkt stellt, anstatt die Zeit als Wunsch zu erforschen, seine Vergangenheit in der Gegenwart wiederherzustellen (reparative Nostalgie). / In Queering Nabokov: Postmodernist Temporalities and Eroticism in Ada, or Ardor, Nathalia Saliba Dias approaches Vladimir Nabokov’s late work from the perspective of Queer theory and Queer temporalities to investigate one particular combination of themes: the intersection of postmodernist temporalities, playfulness, and eroticism. Nabokov’s approach to time has been often associated with the modernist search for transcendence and timelessness, being interpreted in the light of Marcel Proust and Henri Bergosn. In Ada, or Ardor (1969), however, Nabokov embraces alternative forms of temporality, which are historically identified as feminine and queer (like rhythms and texture) in opposition to linearity, clock and calendar time, which are often associated with masculine time. Furthermore, Nabokov describes the character’s memories as a sexual event and manipulates historical materials (photos, slides, books, etc.) as sexual objects. He also sexualizes his relationship with other authors in the composition of the novel, transforming literary history into a homoerotic and misogynistic relationship. Finally, Nabokov sexualizes his literary family and devices, especially parody, “inserting,” “penetrating,” and “manipulating” the material of others in his own writings in deviant ways. The central argument of this thesis is that in Ada, or Ardor Nabokov finally focuses on a playful treatment of time (reflective nostalgia), as an embodied and sexual experience, rather than exploring time as a wish to reinstate his past in the presente (reparative nostalgia).

In this essay, I analyze Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita from an ecocritical perspective. I try as far as possible to ignore the pedophile theme and instead focus on the thematic environment: nature, places and language. I then discuss this with Greg Garrard's Ecocriticism, Timothy Morton's ecocritical theories and Leo Marx's The machine in the garden, among others. I come to the conclusion that the pedophile theme is depicted against the American pastoral, which is also used as a rhetorical tool by the novel's main character and narrator. / I den här uppsatsen analyserar jag Vladimir Nabokovs roman Lolita ur ett ekokritiskt perspektiv. Jag försöker så långt som möjligt bortse från det pedofila temat och i stället riktas mitt fokus på den tematiska omgivningen: naturen, platserna och språket. Detta diskuterar jag sedan med hjälp av bland annat Greg Garrards Ecocriticism, Timothy Mortons ekokritiska teorier samt Leo Marxs The machine in the garden. Jag kommer fram till att det pedofila temat skildras mot den amerikanska pastoralen, vilken också används som retoriskt redskap av romanens huvudkaraktär och berättare.

In her introduction to a special issue of the South Central Review on literary biography published in 2006, Linda Leavell writes, "Many would trace the disdain for literary biography—in both senses of the word “literary”—back through Roland Barthes’s “death of the author” to the New Critics’ division of text from context all the way to T. S. Eliot’s theory of impersonality. Critical theory of the past century has generally deemed an author’s life, personality, and intentions irrelevant to the text" (1). Leavell’s explanation of how critical theory of the twentieth century came to shape the current scholarly attitude towards literary biography establishes the genre’s status in an era of literary theory that is commonly characterized by the diminishment of the author as the source of meaning in a text, an era in which we remain. This characterization, however, overlooks the different ways that the theorists of the era displaced the author as the dominant figure in literary studies. This paper demonstrates how these different ways, despite whatever damage they might have done to the status of literary biography, actually benefit the study of the genre. Additionally, this paper argues that they not only comprise one side of Vladimir Nabokov’s contradictory views on his own authorship, which makes him an ideal subject for the study of authority over biographical representation, but also gave rise to new methodologies of literary biography, which are the methodologies of Nabokov’s biographers themselves. As a result, this paper concludes, “an author’s life, personality, and intentions” in turn have assumed new relevancy in literary studies. / text

The goal of this study was to examine if, how, and why sympathy and empathy was created in Nabokov’s two narratives dealing with pedophilia; Lolita and The Enchanter. A large amount of research did exist on this subject regarding Lolita, but not on The Enchanter. Since Nabokov has referred to The Enchanter as a kind of pre-Lolita in the “Authors Note One” in The Enchanter, I thought it would be interesting to see what similar techniques he used to generate sympathy and empathy from the reader in the two books, and to examine if they had any differences regarding the subject. After a close reading of the books, some defining features could be found to be connected to sympathy and empathy. These features had to do with the narration, the form, and the language. The protagonists used these different feature to create a bond with the reader, a bond that is then used to make the reader feel for or/and with the protagonists. Lolita is a longer, more developed, and more comprehensive story than The Enchanter which gives Humbert more time to create and use this bond with the reader. Therefore, Lolita is more likely to generate empathy and sympathy from the reader. If a reader experiences those emotions though, depends on the individual reader. All I have presented in this essay is related to how Nabokov invite empathy and sympathy from the reader when reading Lolita and The Enchanter. That does not mean all readers experience these emotions since it is an individual process that depends on how each reader interprets the narrative.

The word poshlost’ denotes the concepts of banality, vulgarity or phlistinism, and has been an intellectual and cultural obsession since the second half of the nineteenth century, lasting well into the twentieth century. Russian author Vladimir Nabokov attempted to familiarize English-speaking readers with the notion of poshlost’ in his book Nikolai Gogol (1944); it is hard to find any English-language exposition of the term that does not cite Nabokov’s vigorous elaboration of it. Moreover, it is arguably a convention in scholarship to acknowledge the relationship between poshlost’ and Nabokov’s uncompromising moral and aesthetic values. Poshlost’ has often been discussed as a theme in Nabokov’s fiction, and its bearing on Nabokov’s role as a cultural critic has often been assessed, but there are few studies that examine how the concept influences the overall composition and interpretation of his fiction. This thesis examines how poshlost’ functions as a literary device in Nabokov’s final Russian-language novel Dar (1938), which tells the story of an émigré Russian writer living in Berlin in the 1920s. I look at poshlost’ from the perspective of the theories of aesthetic innovation advanced by semiotician and cultural theorist Iurii Lotman, and within this framework I link poshlost’ with the formation and re-formation of the protagonist’s, as well as the author’s, consciousness. I consider it a relational construct rather than simply an immanent feature of the text, as it would be considered in Russian Formalist approaches. Among the topics I focus on are individuation, self-modelling and autocommunication as facets of the process of personal and creative maturation. I argue that poshlost’ serves as a means of modelling Nabokov’s aesthetics as a textual feature and is a multisignifying and a multifaceted device whose overall artistic effect depends on the conditions under which it is employed.

This dissertation will apply the structure of a legal trial’s procedures to two Modernist novels: Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier (1915) and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955). These novels position themselves as renderings of legal proceedings, the written memoriam of metaphorical trials conducted by first person narrators who alternatively and simultaneously function as Plaintiff’s counsel, Defense Counsel and finally as witnesses to the events of the story. All of these personae reveal evidence and testimony presented in the forum of a trial of the central characters who recollect legal events and whose narrations develop moral questions. Thus these narrations are the court record, from which there is no appeal, culminating in not only persuasive arguments about guilt and innocence of the central characters, but also demanding that a verdict or moral judgment be rendered by the reader of these behaviors and values of the individuals as well as the societies which these authors critique in their novels. Ford Madox Ford in The Good Soldier (1915) and Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita (1955) create fictional artifacts which instill impressions of human life and present specific revelations of human nature in their art. Their narratives explain certain events in a temporal order, which communicate to readers a fictional world, its participants, and especially their emotions. These particular novels are early and late examples of Modernism, and are very different from one another, yet both illustrate the characteristics that so clearly define the Modern novel: art’s ability to engage not just the mind but the senses; the reader does not just read, but rather becomes immersed in the feelings of the characters in the story. The reader feels the dynamics between the characters through the narrative presentation as closely as possible to his or her being actually present in the fictionally created world of the novel. Both novels present their stories in a thrice-told frame that allows the character/narrators to explore epistemology and justifications for their acts or inaction. These stories are recollections, so that each character/narrator is remembering his respective narrative after the facts; these novels are unique for this timing.

This study compares the relation between beauty, objectification, and transcendence in two novels: Oscar Wilde's early-modernist The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and Vladimir Nabokov's late-modernist Pale Fire (1962). Though written over half a century apart, the works feature similar critiques of the aesthete's devotion to beauty. While Wilde's novel offers an insider's view of aristocratic Decadence in late-nineteenth-century London, Nabokov's reflects his early influence from the Russian Symbolists and recalls that tradition in the American suburbs of the mid-twentieth-century. Both novels demonstrate the trust that many modernists held in the ability of beauty to offer transcendence over the limits and suffering of mortal life. Yet they also call attention to the dangers of aesthetic obsession. My study applies the theories of Plato, Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Vladimir Solovyov, Laura Mulvey, and Steven Drukman to the aesthetic sensibilities presented in the novels. To understand how these ideologies inform the works, I have divided the main characters into three categories---artist, spectator, and aesthetic object. Both Wilde and Nabokov present beauty as a positive force for its ability to provide at least temporary transcendence. The authors also, however, portray the tragic consequences of aesthetic objectification. By comparing the two works, I conclude that both highlight the dangers of the aesthete's obsession with beauty, but only Nabokov's Pale Fire offers a solution: the need for pity toward those who become the objects of the aesthetic gaze.

The decades following two world wars, the European Holocaust and the threat of nuclear annihilation presented American authors with an occupational dilemma: catastrophic histories call out for recognition, but any representation of them risks adding violence to violence by falsifying the account or conflating historical acts of violence with their artificial doubles. This project reimagines the political aesthetics of postmodern American fiction through two major interventions. First, I identify an aesthetic structure of apposition--a parallel relationship between abstract works of art and the everyday world that I take from William Carlos Williams--that allows me to productively resolve a tension in the aesthetics of Hannah Arendt: because representation takes mimesis as a particular end, Arendt disqualifies representational art from politics, which she defines as open-ended action between human beings and not as end-centered state-craft. At the same time, Arendt claims that art is a product of thought, the cognitive activity she associates with political action over and against fabrication. My heterodox reading of Arendt shows that appositional narratives, like political actors, perform their own self-disclosure, beginning the open-ended chain of actions and reactions that Arendt identifies as the substantial form of politics and ethics. Second, I use my revision of Arendt to demonstrate that appositional narratives act politically through the very same metafictional tropes that critics often label as escapist or solipsistic. Rather than copy historical experience, appositional narratives reject illusionary representation and present themselves as actors, inciting their readers to respond with pluralistic, provisional judgment. Taking Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Roth and Toni Morrison--three central but rarely-juxtaposed postmodern novelists--as case studies, I show that we cannot properly assess the political implications of postmodern fiction without understanding the specific mechanisms of narrative apposition. Appositional works stand temporarily and self-consciously in the place of the world, displacing it in the experience of their readers. This narrative strategy provides a political alternative for novelists facing the ethical crises of postmodernity. Appositional narratives displace their readers' settled beliefs and press them to exercise their human capacity for judgment. They embrace their responsibility for the world by refusing to represent it. / text