Of Time And Memory In Nabokov's English Novels

This paper aims at the research of time and memory in Nabokov's major English-language novels. Regarding Nabokov's own experiences, this paper taps his alternative time, alternative thinking about time and memory, to explore his influence to modernism and post-modernist literature.This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter introduces Nabokov's works and the research on him. The second chapter focuses on time. The characters in the novels are trapped by time. In this chapter, the time that the characters have experienced is fractured and they are trapped in the past. In the third chapter, this thesis centers on memory, which is the only thing that characters in time prison is always pursuing untiringly. They try everything they can to hold the flowing of time so as to keep time. They cherish the every single thing that has some relation to memory, in order to let the past replay. They are willing to live in the fixed past, where they regard as precious and wonderful. In this chapter, we can see the characters all resist the reality, as they are immersed in the past. They more or less have some mental problem and some even under therapy. As a result, the narrative technique is just like an endless maze. The narrators in novels hide behind the text, changing tense and person to create narrative maze. The last chapter deals with the whole artistic feature. The narrators all expect to be eternal; they never give up writing, which in their opinion is the only way to keep memory, to be eternal. They are eager to write and record their desire to achieve the kind of eternal, retain the memory forever.The narrators in the six English novels are all telling the past stories, which are fractured with their real life. The characters in the novels all lives in memory and they are always against with reality. They spare no effort to write down the past to stop time and through art to pursue eternalness.