The Prisoner Of Freedom

Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian-born American novelist, is generally acknowledged as a unique and distinctive figure in the history of twentieth-century American literature. Lolita is one of bis most controversial works written in English, which brings Nabokov international reputation, but also leaves untold topics to generation after generation of the readers.The critical appreciation of Lolita has continued to grow steadily since its publication, but it is only recently that criticism has looked beyond the cleverness and bold aestheticism of Nabokov's work to perceive its equally strong ethical and metaphysical aspects. This thesis aims to analyze Loita from a new perspective of Liu Xiaofeng's narrative ethics. As a new possibility of ethical criticism, it studies the significance of life feelings from the exceptional situations of individual's unique fate, embraces individual' s fate closely, and focuses on the abyss of individual's life. Firstly the discussion proves that Nabokov's versions of liberty and individualism are consistent with Liu Xiaofeng's free ethics. Then the thesis probes into the techniques of the individual narration of free ethics, in which Lolita's structure and style are analyzed by re-narration (the way of employing narrative ethics in literature criticism that is a combination of ethical dialog, artistic explanation and narrative analysis) from the following three aspects: 1 The choice of protagonist's temperament; 2 The development of the story; 3 Duality of the narration. During the process of re-naration, the readers reenter the narrating space of Lolita, accompanying Humbert's narrating, experiencing his exceptional ethical situation, and finally form their own moral consciousness from the narrating.Based on the above analysis, the thesis reveals Nabokov's profoundly humane heart under the cover of his splendid artistic techniques, and wakens the reader to keep cautious to choose his/her ethical way to live.