The European Nabokov Web, Classicism and T.S. Eliot / / Robin H. Davies.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Academic Studies Press Backlist eBook-Package 2008-2013
• VerfasserIn: Davies, Robin H.,
• Place / Publishing House: Boston, MA : : Academic Studies Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Russian and Slavic Literatures, Cultures, and History
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (235 p.)

Robin Davies here demonstrates that Nabokov’s Pale Fire has a classical unity and represents a direct attack on T.S. Eliot’s philosophical position, particularly as given in The Waste Land and as represented by Eliot’s later tendency for conservatism in literature, politics, and religion. After Nabokov was forced into exile from Germany and then France in the 1930s with his young son and Jewish wife, Eliot’s passivism must have seemed to him the very antithesis of survival. The enigmatic Pale Fire and its surface triviality suggested that there could be self-consistent logic within the obvious commentary of Charles Kinbote and John Shade’s poem. Davies places this work in its vast European context, forming a bridge between Russian and European literature which will be appreciated by scholars of both.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Foreword -- Introduction -- I. Lingua Franca and Topsy-turvical Coincidence -- II. In Search of Horace and a Web of Sense -- III. Héraclius, Hamlet and Genealogy -- IV. Zembla - “How Farce and Epic Get a Jumbled Race” -- V. Hamlet Unrestored: Sémiramis and the Royal Tomb -- VI. Classical Affinities I : A Modern Aeneas -- VII. Classical affinities II: An Ancient Nisus -- VIII. The Browning Version and Contemporary Reality -- IX. Corn, Cuckoldry, and the Amazonian Chin -- X. Toile d’Eliot or Combinational Delight -- XI. Phoenician Metamorphoses: Myth and Reality -- XII. Varia - Selenography, Kinbote/Botkin, Glaucus, Fénélon -- XIII. Murderous Intrigues -- XIV. Tragedy and the Stagyrite -- XV. Dramatic Poetry, Regicide, and Poetic Drama -- XVI. Germanitas and Les Germains -- XVII. Deus in Machina -- Bibliography -- Index