Postmodernist Narrative Features Of Lolita By Vladimir Nabokov

In 1950s, modernism began to develop into postmodernism in USA. Vladimir Nabokov's representative work, Lolita, published in 1955, is one of the most controversial fictions of the 20th-century. The fiction brought Nabokov international reputation, but also to generation after generation of readers leave untold topic. The complicacy of subject matter, symbolic configuration between the leading character, suspicion and denial of traditional values, the search for missing the main body and carefully depicted details, all make not only the Lolita confusing and complicated, but also become the first fiction of postmodernism in the history of American literature. This thesis aims to analyze Nabokov's representative work-Lolita from the perspective of the postmodern literary criticism theory. In the postmodern context, the thesis mainly analyzes Lolita's background culture, genre, form and artistic techniques, etc. Thus it intends to illustrate its major postmodern narrative features. And to reveal the artistic charms in Lolita which was considered as the American postmodernism herald. It is hoped that this thesis will be beneficial for further study of Nabokov's life and works. This thesis consists of seven chapters.Chapter one gives a brief introduction to Nabokov's life, works and also gives a brief survey to Lolita and its literature review, bringing out this thesis'basic thoughts and arguments and states out the theoretical base, the research methods and the layout of this thesis.Chapter two displays the background of postmodern American culture. Popular culture, car industry and death expression portrayed in Lolita embody the mass trend characteristics of the postmodernism culture from the fiction's theme.Chapter three mainly discusses Lolita's instable literature genres. Its mingling genres embody the postmodern fiction creation mode of anti-genres.Chapter four offers a detail analysis of Lolita's metafiction narrative form. Through analyzing characters and plots'make-up in the fiction, metafiction's characteristics are revealed exposing make-up in the fiction deliberately. Metafiction is the important narration characteristic of postmodernist writing.Chapter five explores Lolita's parody, which is regarded as an important feature of postmodernist writing techniques. Nabokov is a genius of using parody to convey his artistic idea. It discusses the parody of different literary genres, parody of love subject and parody of psychiatric case study.Chapter six focuses on the fragmentation in Lolita, through riddle, wordplay and never-ending pattern, the wholeness and completion of the novel are interrupted. Fragmentation is another important narrative feature in postmodern fiction.Chapter seven concludes the whole thesis with the summary of Lolita's postmodernism narrative strategies and the significance of this study.