A Tentative Analysis Of Nabokov's Anxiety About Expression In Lolita And Pale Fire

Vladimir Nabokov(1899-1977) is considered to be an outstanding Russian American novelist in the Twentieth Century.Focusing on his best known novels Lolita(1955) and Pale Fire(1962),on the basis of intensive reading and comparative analysis,with related achievements in Nabokov studies as well as Nabokov's points of view,this thesis attempts to analyze the fictional "writers"' restriction on flee writing which reveals Nabokov's concern about restricted expression.This thesis consists of five parts.Part One focuses on summarizing current research on Lolita and Pale Fire.Part Two is devoted to the analysis of the fictional "editors"' personality defects as well as their arrogance and ignorance.Part Three analyzes the fictional "editors"' abuse of the editorial power and distortion of the fictional "writers"' works. Part Four,from the fictional "writers"' perspective,probes into the situations that they are writing under supervision or intervention,as well as the implied meaning of the fictional "'writers"' death before their works are edited.Part Five discusses that similar plot settings in these two novels reveal Nabokov's anxiety on expression,and also concludes the factors which restrict the fictional "writers" from free expression in both novels.