The Self In A Postmodernist Context

Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian-born American, has been labeled as a postmodernist writer. He is an important and influential novelist in contemporary America, who is generally acknowledged by many critics as one of the most excellent and great writers of the English literature. The creation and uniqueness of the form as well as the reflective joy showed in his novels make Nabokov have no parallel among his contemporaries. His main English works were written and published in the 1950s and 1960s when postmodernism rose as a popular tendency. Lolita is Nabokov's masterpiece, his novel which bears the most American features and also his most controversial work. This novel brings its author international reputation and has left the readers untold topics since its publication.Since the mid twentieth century, modern West has entered postmodern period. As the environment in which people live has radically changed after the Second World War, the relationship between human, the world, human and human as well as human and his self has undergone radical changes. Nabokov lives in a late capitalist society or postmodern society, his masterpiece Lolita can be regarded, to some extent, as the natural reaction to the condition of human and his self in the postmodernist context.Lolita, with an unconventional plot and unique form, has remained the critics'focus of attention since its appearance. Most of the comments center on its aesthetic values and the postmodernist writing skills showed in this novel, such as parody, pastiche, meta-fiction and so on. Nabokov and his work Lolita are located in a postmodernist context in this thesis. With the everlasting theme of literature - the exploration of self, this thesis is intended to probe how self is represented in the novel through the analysis of the three characters, aiming to further the study of Nabokov's thoughts of postmodernist literary creation, enrich the meaning contained in Lolita and prompt people to meditate on the self problems in a postmodernist context.