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- Berlin in the 1920s brought on major life changes

- First few novels written under the Russian pseudonym, Sirin

- 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight' - first novel written in English

- Reputation as both a scientist and teacher brings him to U.S.

- Job at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard for his knowledge and skill in entomology

- Professor of literature at both Wellesley College and Cornell University, focusing on great German, English, French, and Russian writers

- 'Lolita' becomes a bestseller and provides him with the success to go further in his research and expression

- Continues writing and exploring up until his death on July 2, 1977, leaving his last novel, 'The Originl of Laura', only an unfinished manuscript when he passed

- Remains married to Vera and they live the rest of their lives in Europe

- His reputation varied by location - some readers unconcerned with the subject matter, others were understanding of his views

-Took until the 70s for a literary critic to describe Nabokov as “king over that battered mass society called contemporary fiction”

Vladimir Nabokov

&

Post-Modernism

Vladimir Nabokov - Background

- Born on April 23, 1899 - St. Petersburg, Russia

- Sophistocated, liberal family dedicated to public service and cultural appreciation

- Multilingual education

- Traveling brought out passions for literature and insects

- Happy childhood ended by The Bolshevik Revolution

- Lived in London/Berlin and attended Trinity College at Cambridge in England

- Began his writing career in the Russian language and created the first Russian crossword puzzles

Nabokov - Background (cont.)

Characteristics of Post-Modernism

Nabokov - Background (cont.)

-Irony

-Pastiche

-Intertextuality

-Metafiction

-Temporal Distortion

-Faction

-Paranoia

Post-Modernism

Nabokov's "The Vane Sisters"

"The Vane Sisters" Connection

- Readers introduced to a new kind of plot construction and a trick ending considered highly complex

- Narrator of piece also a teacher of literature

- Nabokov describes that his tricky revelation at the end should be rare in pieces of work

- Device works to both intensify and conclude the story

- Nabokov brings about a new kind of writing

- The author-reader relationship tested in complex ways

- The narrator's true identity and motivations revealed through actions and phrases with hidden significance

-Most extreme example of an unreliable narrator

-Refers to a novel within a novel

-The narrator becomes paranoid of Cynthia's ghost

-Adds jokes from author to reader for irony

-Like Modernism, Post-Modernism is hard to define and there are many debates on what characteristics make it up

-Starting in the 1940s, it was mainly used to describe post World War II literature

-Interpetation is everything

-Relies on concrete experience over abstract principles

-"post" because it denies the existence of any ultimate principles

Nabokov forces his readers to pay attention to what is being told and lays traps to mislead the readers expectations.

Nabokov says himself that it "can only be tried once in a thousand years of fiction."

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