On The Postmodern Features Of Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian-born American novelist, is generally acknowledged as a unique and distinctive figure in the history of twentieth-century American literature. Nabokov often gives rise to controversy in criticism. Many critics acclaim him as one of the finest stylists and one of the greatest novelists in American literature. Taking Lolita as an example, Harold Bloom holds that where Nabokov can hardly be overprized is in his achievement as a stylist. John Updike calls him"grandmaster"and argues that, in the intensity of its intelligence and reflective joy, his fiction is unique and scarcely precedented in American literature of his time. Nevertheless, there are unfavorable criticisms on Nabokov. Donald E. Morton argues that Nabokov stresses too much on subjectivity, which makes his characters sound like solitaries, like individuals completely wrapped up in their own mental worlds. It is as if they have no sense whatever of the objective existence of an outer reality. Jonathan Raban deems that his English is a shaky blend of grammarian's pedantry and miscued slang. The language of the novel is itself a hyperactive mongrel of English, French and Russian.In 1950s, modernism began to develop into postmodernism in USA. Nabokov's representative work, Lolita, published in 1955, is one of the most controversial novels of the 20th-century. The story deals with the desire of a middle-aged pedophile Humbert Humbert, the narrator, for a 12-year-old girl. Coming from Europe to the U.S. on business, he met and married the widowed Charlotte Haze only to be near her 12-year-old daughter Lolita. To achieve this he considered murdering Charlotte for many times. But Charlotte was killed by a car accident. After the burying, Humbert took his stepdaughter Lolita on a cross-country journey. Lolita finally escaped from his jealous protection, and he did not learn of her again until two years later, married, and pregnant. Then she told him that during her days with him, she had been cheated by a famous playwright Clare Quilty. Humbert Humbert murdered Quilty and was jailed but died of a heart attack before his trial. Lolita died in childbirth as delivering a stillborn daughter.Many critics noticed some postmodern elements in Nabokov's later novels, e.g. Pal Fire and Ada, but owing to some reasons, most of them defined Lolita as a...