The early Nabokov novels

Abstract

Comments made by Vladimir Nabokov concerning both his fiction and literature in general have helped determine the critical attitude of his most influential readers. The consensus among them is that his novels are meticulously self-contained artifacts that are meant to be "investigated" according to his precepts. As a result, his early novels have garnered relatively little critical attention because it is assumed that they were written at a time when he had not yet arrived at a full mastery of the principles that would inform his more carefully crafted art in later years. This thesis will show how three early novels actually benefit from the kind of close reading critics have reserved for later ones. In order to do this, however, it engages with the sort of theorists that Nabokovians, encouraged by the Master's dismissive comments, have tended to avoid.