Vladimir Nabokov and the Ideological Aesthetic: A Study of His Novels and Plays, 1926-1939

ISBN-13: 9781787072893 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 210 str.

Udith Dematagoda

Opis

The perception of Nabokov as an apolitical writer is one which the author encouraged in the latter part of his career, despite having lived through the traumatic historical ruptures of the past century. This book argues that ideology and politics actually had an indelible effect on his literary aesthetics and explores his work through this lens.

Spis treści

CONTENTS: Ideology and the Ideological Aesthetic - The Ruthless Schemers of Tomsk and Atomsk: The Man from the USSR and The Waltz Invention - Bits of My Past Litter the Floor: Ideology, Epistemology, and the «Modernism of Underdevelopment» in The Eye and Despair - «Violin in a Void»: Totalitarianism on Trial in Invitation to a Beheading - My Kingdom: The Formation of the Ideological Aesthetic in The Gift - The Absolute Solution: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and the Ideology of Aesthetic Autonomy - Ideology as Aesthetic: The Aesthetic as Ideology.

O autorze

Udith Dematagoda is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. He received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow in 2016. He taught English and comparative literature at the University of Glasgow and the University of Nice and he was visiting researcher at The Butler Library at Columbia University and The Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. He has written and presented extensively on Vladimir Nabokov in Russia, Europe and North America and is a member of the Société Française Vladimir Nabokov. His wider research focuses on ideology and aesthetics in relation to works of twentieth-century English and European modernist literature, masculinity and fascism, and the emergence and evolution of digital ideologies.