On The Lierary Criticism Of Nabokov----a Study Of Lectures On Literature And Lectures On Don Quixote

In the twentieth century, the literary world was filled with colorful literary genres and different schools of thought, which were composed by realism, modernism and many other genres. At that time, many philosophical and cultural thoughts sprung up and set trends. As a witness of that era, Nabokov was inevitably affected by them and under the their influence, his own unique literary thoughts and ideas got formedNabokov was born in Russia then ousted into Western European countries and finally went to the United States. His childhood in Russia and exile in Western European countries have a very important influence on his literary ideas. Russian symbolism and formalism are deeply rooted in his thoughts, which are not only reflected in his works, but also in his literary criticism to other writers. As a critic, Nabokov’s literary creation is a vivid embodiment of his literary concept. Based on some important literary theories of Russian symbolist and formalism, he also learned from Western modernism and many other schools of thought such as Anglo-American "new criticism", existentialism and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and so on. Because of all above, he could make independent and creative judgments on Russian, European and American literature.Compared with his complex and obscure narration in novels, as a creative and post-modernism writer, Nabokov’s literary and art criticism are vivid and concrete. In his literary criticism, he explored the relationship between art and reality, writers and readers in details, which reflected his unique literary concepts. Particularly, Nabokov puts great emphasis on detailed analysis on some elements such as space, style and structure of a great number of famous works in Europe. All of these were the his unique reflection of these works. As a literary evolutionist based on some famous works of the19th century, Nabokov gave expression to the production, development and perfection of novels.Nabokov’s literary criticism aims at distinguishing the true writers and great works. At the same time, he wanted to make readers understand the greatness of these works and the ways of reading through his interpretation. Although his works seem different, in essence, his thoughts are closely related with many other great writers and artists and have a great and endless value. All in all, Nabokov expressed his different and unique literary concepts in novels and by criticism. Nabokov’s novels are more of his own literary concepts rather than the analysis of other writers’ works. Overall, all of this is presented in the form of lectures, fascinating and valuable for studying, easy for readers to understand.