Vladimir Nabokov: Bergsonian and Russian Formalist Influences in His Novels

Glynn provides a new reading of Vladimir Nabokov s work by seeking to challenge the notion that he was a Symbolist writer concerned with a transcendent reality. Glynn argues that Nabokov s epistemology was in fact anti-Symbolist and that this aligned him with both Bergsonism and Russian Formalism, which intellectual systems were themselves hostile to a Symbolist epistemology. Symbolism may be seen to devalue material reality by presenting it as a mere adumbration of a higher realm. Nabokov, however, valued the immediate material world and was creatively engaged by the tendency of the deluded mind to efface that reality.

Author: M. Glynn
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 12/20/2007
Pages: 202
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.75lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.50w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781403979858

About the Author
MICHAEL GLYNN is Head of the English Department at the City College Plymouth, UK