The Interpretation Of Nabokov’s Narrative Strategy And Moral Concern In Pale Fire

Vladimir Nabokov is generally regarded as one of the world’s greatest writers and stylists and he is also one of the most outstanding postmodern figures in the 20 th century.As his representative, Pale Fire is thought as one of Nabokov’s greatest and most popular masterpieces. Pale Fire is composed of four parts: a foreword, a 999-line poem in heroic couplet, a commentary and an index. As the most intricately-designed and the most uniquely–structured work ever seen, Pale Fire has been widely analyzed by many researchers and critics at home and abroad since its publishment in the 1960 s. These researches and analysis mainly focus on studying the form technique(such as writing style,narrative strategy and features of postmodernism) of the novel and Nabokov’s aesthetic value. These achievements made by previous researches are quite impressive. However,among these researches, there are few articles combining the study of Nabokov’s narrative strategy and humanistic spirit together and it is a pity in the field. From this point, this thesis tries to study Pale Fire on the basis of Wayne Booth’s rhetorical theory and by analyzing details in the text, it aims to appreciate Nabokov’s exquisite narrative technique and then explore his moral concern, which is often ignored by many critics and readers.Finally the thesis gets the conclusion that Nabokov is far away from an aesthete indifferent to the everyday struggle of humanity. Instead, he is not only an exquisite stylist but also a sincere moralist and he has great concern towards liberty and humanity.Nabokov’s aesthetic bliss does not preclude morality, but involves and presents it indirectly in the authorial rhetoric.