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Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction
The first collection to address the vexing issue of Nabokov’s moral stances, this book argues that he designed his novels and stories as open-ended ethical problems for readers to confront. In a dozen new essays, international Nabokov scholars tackle those problems directly while addressing such questions as whether Nabokov was a bad reader, how he defined evil, if he believed in God, and how he constructed fictional works that led readers to become aware of their own moral positions. In order to elucidate his engagement with aesthetics, metaphysics, and ethics, Nabokov and the Question of Morality explores specific concepts in the volume’s four sections: “Responsible Reading,” “Good and Evil,” “Agency and Altruism,” and “The Ethics of Representation.” By bringing together fresh insights from leading Nabokovians and emerging scholars, this book establishes new interdisciplinary contexts for Nabokov studies and generates lively readings of works from his entire career.

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Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction
The first collection to address the vexing issue of Nabokov’s moral stances, this book argues that he designed his novels and stories as open-ended ethical problems for readers to confront. In a dozen new essays, international Nabokov scholars tackle those problems directly while addressing such questions as whether Nabokov was a bad reader, how he defined evil, if he believed in God, and how he constructed fictional works that led readers to become aware of their own moral positions. In order to elucidate his engagement with aesthetics, metaphysics, and ethics, Nabokov and the Question of Morality explores specific concepts in the volume’s four sections: “Responsible Reading,” “Good and Evil,” “Agency and Altruism,” and “The Ethics of Representation.” By bringing together fresh insights from leading Nabokovians and emerging scholars, this book establishes new interdisciplinary contexts for Nabokov studies and generates lively readings of works from his entire career.

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Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction

Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction

Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction

Nabokov and the Question of Morality: Aesthetics, Metaphysics, and the Ethics of Fiction

Overview

The first collection to address the vexing issue of Nabokov’s moral stances, this book argues that he designed his novels and stories as open-ended ethical problems for readers to confront. In a dozen new essays, international Nabokov scholars tackle those problems directly while addressing such questions as whether Nabokov was a bad reader, how he defined evil, if he believed in God, and how he constructed fictional works that led readers to become aware of their own moral positions. In order to elucidate his engagement with aesthetics, metaphysics, and ethics, Nabokov and the Question of Morality explores specific concepts in the volume’s four sections: “Responsible Reading,” “Good and Evil,” “Agency and Altruism,” and “The Ethics of Representation.” By bringing together fresh insights from leading Nabokovians and emerging scholars, this book establishes new interdisciplinary contexts for Nabokov studies and generates lively readings of works from his entire career.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781349955558
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date: 04/21/2018
Edition description: Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2016
Pages: 241
Product dimensions: 5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael Rodgers is a Teaching Assistant at the University of Strathclyde, UK, where he completed his PhD dissertation on the relationship between Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction and Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. He is currently researching the idea of uncomfortable humor in twentieth-century literature.

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney is Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, USA. The author of over thirty essays on Nabokov, she was twice elected president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and currently coedits NABOKV-L, the Vladimir Nabokov Electronic Forum. She also publishes widely on American literature, detective fiction, and narrative theory.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Abbreviations for Titles of Nabokov’s Works and Biography

Introduction

Nabokov’s Morality Play

Michael Rodgers and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

Responsible Reading

1

“And So the Password Is—?”: Nabokov and the Ethics of Rereading

Tom Whalen

2

Nabokov and Dostoevsky: Good Writer, Bad Reader?

Julian Connolly

3

The Will to Disempower? Nabokov and His Readers

Michael Rodgers

Good and Evil

4

Nabokov’s God; God’s Nabokov

Samuel Schuman

5

By Trial and Terror

Gennady Barabtarlo

6

The Aesthetics of Moral Contradiction in Some Early Nabokov Novels

David Rampton

Agency and Altruism

7

Loving and Giving in Nabokov’s The Gift

Jacqueline Hamrit

8

Kinbote’s Heroism

Laurence Piercy

The Ethics of Representation

9

Whether Judgments, Sentences, and Executions Satisfy the Moral Sense in Nabokov

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

10

The Art of Morality, or on Lolita

Leland de la Durantaye

11

“Obnoxious Preoccupation with Sex Organs”: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Representing Sex

Elspeth Jajdelska

 

12

Modern Mimesis

Michael Wood

Notes on Contributors

Index

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