COML0482 - Nabokov: Art, Otherworldliness, and Morality

This course bridges the gap between the “Russian Nabokov” and the “American Nabokov.” All of the readings in this course are in English and no knowledge of Russian is required, but the majority of the readings are translations of Nabokov’s Russian-language works. Your study of Nabokov as a celebrated émigré novelist writing in Russian in the 1920s and 30s will contextualize his second career as an American author and enrich your further study of his English-language novels. Starting with the small yet significant task of learning to pronounce his name correctly (alas, The Police got it wrong in their 1980 hit “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”), your knowledge and reading of Nabokov will grow in increasing depth and complexity over the course of the semester. The climactic novel of the semester is Nabokov’s final Russian novel, The Gift, which is arguably his greatest novel ever (yes, even better than Lolita or Pale Fire). The final text for study, his American Pnin, written in tandem with Lolita, serves as our example of Nabokov’s prose after his transition to English. The central themes for this course are derived from the arc of inquiry in Nabokov scholarship, concerning Art (and artifice), Otherworldliness (termed, in Russian, “potustoronnost”), and Morality (an area of interest after years of claims that Nabokov’s works are amoral and/or immoral). These trends in scholarship occurred, more or less, successively, but we will consider all the themes simultaneously in each text. In addition to becoming a proficient reader of Nabokov’s challenging and fascinating fiction, you will develop and hone your critical reading skills, as well as gain competency in major areas of inquiry in literary studies, especially narrative strategies, inter-textuality, and metafiction.