A Study Of Unreliable Narrators Of Nabokov's Postmodern Novels

As one of the most important writers and novelists in the 20~thh century,Vladimir Nabokov(1899-1977)made a substantial contribution to both the Russian literature and English literature.His controversial works always been the focus of attention for the world literature.Based on the theory of unreliable narration,this thesis focuses on analyzing the unreliable narrators in Nabokov's postmodernist novels and finds the commonality of unreliable narrators in Nabokov's English novels and reveals Nabokov's true purpose for setting unreliable narrators and the true meaning of the novel.The thesis consists of three parts:The first part is introduction.It first introduces Nabokov including his legend life,his famous works and the critics commented on him and his works.Next it introduces the domestic and abroad research on Nabokov and his works and exposes the current situation of insufficient research on unreliable narrators,and puts forward the research perspective and the value of this thesis.The second part consists of three chapters.It is the text analysis based on Booth and Phelan's theory of the unreliable narration in Nabokov's three novels.The first chapter introduces the unreliable narrators in Lolita.In this book,it exists two unreliable narrators,respectively Humbert and Doctor Ray.It gives the reasons and evidence to show readers why these two narrators are unreliable and explains to the readers how two unreliable narrators play a role in the narrative of the novel.The second chapter based on the book Pale Fire,it discusses the unreliability of Kinbote from three aspects,his unreliable interpretation,unreliable report and unreliable evaluation.The third chapter discusses Nabokov's another novel,Pnin.This chapter firstly presents the unreliable narrator“I”based on the text,and then based on the theory of Booth's definition of the relationship between implied authors and narrators,it deeply discusses the inconsistent relationship between the unreliable narrator and the implied author.The third part is conclusion.It not only makes a summary of the previous chapters but also presents the common features and characteristics of unreliable narrators in these three books.It finds the inner connection for the three chapters in this thesis,and also states the commonality of the unreliable narrators written by Nabokov.This not only summarizes the entire thesis,but also sublimates the theme of unreliable narrator.All in all,the thesis is to research Nabokov's postmodernist novels with the theory of unreliable narration,including Lolita,Pale Fire and Pnin.And it tries to enrich the connotation of the novel theory and reveal the charm of the novel text.