LOLITA:

/llit/ noun [countable]

a girl who is too young to have sex legally,
but who behaves in a sexually
attractive way.
Source: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English.
 The author
Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist born
in 1889.

He has lived in several countries, including Germany,

France, England, the USA and Switzerland.

He has written several novels, novellas and short stories:

Pale Fire (1962) and Speak, Memory (1967).
Psychologically unstable characters, focus on memory,
forewords with key information.
 The plot
Framed story:
1950s United States.
Middle-aged literature professor, Humbert Humbert
(sexually attracted to nymphets) gets obsessed
with12-year-old Lolita.
H.H. kidnaps Lo and they go on a year-long trip.
While being sick, Lo is taken from hospital by Quilty.
Years later, Lo gets married and pregnant
H.H. finds out about C.Q. and kills him.
 The plot
Framing story:
H.H. (1st person narrator) faces murder charges.
In the trial with a real jury, H.H. tells his story to
defend himself and manipulate the members of
the jury, and the readership.
Both Lo and H.H. are dead: neither of us is alive
when the reader opens this book.
Backwards and forwards.
THE PLOT: FRAMING STORY FORWARD TO THE PRESENT

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number

one is... (P. I, 1) Exhibit number two is a pocket
diary. (P. I, 11).
my learned reader (whose eyebrows, I suspect,
have by now traveled all the way to the back of his
bald head). (P. I, 11).
And folks, I just couldnt. (About killing Charlotte).
( P. I, 20).
THE PLOT: FRAMING STORY FORWARD TO THE PRESENT

Please, reader: no matter your

exasperation with the tenderhearted,
morbidly sensitive, infinitely circumspect
hero of my book, do not skip these
essential pages! Imagine me; I shall not
exist if you do not imagine me (P. I, 29).
THE PLOT: FRAMING STORY FORWARD TO THE PRESENT

This daily headache in the opaque air of

this tombal jail is disturbing, but I must
persevere. Have written more than a
hundred pages and not got anywhere yet.
My calendar is getting confused. That must
have been around August 5, 1947. Dont
think I can go on. (P. I, 26)
 PUBLICATION AND RECEPTION
The novel was originally written in English and first published in
Paris in 1955. Later it was translated into Russian by Nabokov
himself and published in New York in 1967.
At the very end of 1955, the London Sunday Times, called it one
of the three best books of 1955. The London Sunday Express
editor John Gordon called it "the filthiest book I have ever read"
and "sheer unrestrained pornography".
British Customs officers were then instructed by a panicked
Home Office to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. In
December 1956, France followed suit.
When the book was first published 50 years ago, it was
considered by some to be obscene, to others a masterpiece of
fiction. Over the course of five decades, the "masterpiece" vote
has won out, more or less but even two generations later,
there is still a lot of debate.
 FOREWORD
Definition:
A foreword is a short piece of writing at the
beginning of a book, sometimes praise by a
famous person or someone who is not the writer.

Source: Cambridge Dictionary.

 FOREWORD
BUT
I have no intention to glorify H.H. No
doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a
shining example of moral leprosy (). But
how magically his singing violin can
conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for
Lolita that makes us entranced with the
book while abhorring its author!
 FOREWORD
Three aspects throughout the book:

As a case history, Lolita will become, no

doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. As a
work of art, it transcends its expiatory
aspects; and still more important to us than
scientific significance and literary worth, is
the ethical impact the book should have
on the serious reader (...).
 FOREWORD
Final thought:

Lolita should make all of us parents,

social workers, educators apply
ourselves with still greater vigilance and
vision to the task of bringing up a better
generation in a safer world.
CHARACTERS: HUMBERT HUMBERT

Now I wish to introduce the following idea.

Between the age limits of nine and fourteen
there occur maidens who, to certain
bewitched travelers, twice or many times
older than they, reveal their true nature
which is not human, but nymphic (that is,
demoniac); and these chosen creatures I
propose to designate as nymphets. (P. I, 5)
 Characters: Humbert Humbert
Lack of moral values
When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no
nymphet to me; I was her equal. (P. I, 5)

At other times I would tell myself that it was all a question of

attitude, that there was really nothing wrong in being moved to
distraction by girl-children. (P. I, 5)

It occurred to me that regular hours, home-cooked meals, all the

conventions of marriage, the prophylactic routine of its bedroom
activities and, who knows, the eventual flowering of certain moral
values, of certain spiritual substitutes, might help me, if not to purge
myself of my degrading and dangerous desires, at least to keep
them under pacific control. (P. I, 7)
 Characters: Humbert Humbert
Intellectual
I switched to English literature, where so
many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking
teachers in tweeds. Paris suited me. I
discussed Soviet movies with expatriates. I
sat with uranists in the Deux Magots. I
published tortuous essays in obscure
journals. (P. I, 5)
 Characters: Humbert Humbert
Science-like discourse
Nymphets do not occur in polar regions. (P. I, 9)
The median age of pubescence for girls has been
found to be thirteen years and nine months in New
York and Chicago. The age varies for individuals
from ten, or earlier, to seventeen. (P. I, 11)
But nymphets do not have acne although they
gorge themselves on rich food. (P. I, 11)
Dorsal view. (P. I, 11)
The science of nympholepsy is a precise science.
(P. I, 29)
CHARACTERS: HUMBERT HUMBERT
Historial/legal data
Let me remind my reader that in England, with the
passage of the Children and Young Person Act in 1933, the
term girl-child is defined as a girl who is over eight but
under fourteen years (after that, from fourteen to
seventeen, the statutory definition is young person). In
Massachusetts, U.S., on the other hand, a wayward child
is, technically, one between seven and seventeen years
of age (who, moreover, habitually associates with vicious
or immoral persons). Hugh Broughton, a writer of
controversy in the reign of James the First, has proved that
Rahab was a harlot at ten years of age. (P. I, 5)
CHARACTERS: HUMBERT HUMBERT

H.H.s power position

At the hotel we had separate rooms,
but in the middle of the night she came
sobbing into mine, and we made it up
very gently. You see, she had absolutely
nowhere else to go. (P. I, 33)
 MANIPULATIVE NARRATOR

When a narrator is unreliable, there is a

conflict between the narrators
presentation and the rest of the
narrative which makes us suspect his
sincerity.
(John Wasmuth, 2009, Lund University).
Manipulative narrator:
Ansgar Nnning s textual signals
1. The narrator's explicit contradictions and other
discrepancies in the narrative discourse.
Despite my many looks, I am horribly timid. My romantic soul
gets all clammy and shivery at the thought of running into
some awful indecent unpleasantness. (P. I, 11)

2. Discrepancies between the narrator's statements and

actions.
I ripped her shirt off () I tore off her sandals. (P. II, 16)
Manipulative narrator:
Ansgar Nnning s textual signals

3. Divergences between the narrator's description of

herself and other characters' descriptions of her.
I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to
protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child. (P. I, 14)

4. Other characters' corrective verbal remarks or body

signals. (Lolitas)
 Manipulative narrator:
Ansgar Nnning s textual signals
5. An accumulation of direct addresses to the reader and conscious
attempts to direct the reader's sympathy.
I want my learned readers to participate in the scene I am about to
replay; I want them to examine its every detail and see for themselves
how careful, how chaste, the whole wine-sweet event is if viewed with
what my lawyer has called, in a private talk we have had, impartial
sympathy. So let us get started. I have a difficult job before me. (P. I, 13)
6. Syntactic signals denoting the narrator's high level of emotional
involvement, including exclamations, ellipses, repetitions, etc.
Heart, head everything. Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita,
Lolita, Lolita, Lolita, Lolita. Repeat till the page is full, printer. (P. I, 26)
Manipulative narrator:
Ansgar Nnning s textual signals

7. Explicit, self-referential, metanarrative discussions of the narrator's

believability
We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are
unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to
control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years
and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically,
no killers are we. Poets never kill. (P. I, 20).
my credulous, simple, benevolent mind (P. II, 13).
 Different levels of manipulation: threats
... what happens if you complain to the police of my having
kidnapped and raped you? Let us suppose they believe you.
(...) I go to jail. But what happens to you, my orphan? (...)
You become the ward of the Department of Public Welfare
which I am afraid sounds a little bleak. (P. II, 1).
I succeeded in terrorizing Lo. (P. II, 1).
shared secrecy and shared guilt. (P. II, 1).
How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny
it until she had done her morning duty. (P. II, 2).
my spoiled slave-child. (P. II, 8).
 H.H.S ELEGANT LANGUAGE

Nothing could have been more childish than her

snubbed nose, freckled face or the purplish spot on her
naked neck where a fairytale vampire had feasted, or the
unconscious movement of her tongue exploring a touch
of rosy rash around her swollen lips; nothing could be more
harmless than to read about Jill, an energetic starlet who
made her own clothes and was a student of serious
literature; nothing could be more innocent than the part in
that glossy brown hair with that silky sheen on the temple;
nothing could be more nave (P. I, 32).
 H.H.S ELEGANT LANGUAGE

We had been everywhere. We had really seen

nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that
our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous
trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous
country, that, by then, in retrospect, was no more
than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour
books, old tires and her sobs in the nightevery
night, every nightthe moment I feigned sleep.
(P. II, 3).
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
(...) for in this poignant personal study there
lurks a general lesson; the wayward child,
the egotistic mother, the panting maniac
these are not only vivid characters in a
unique story: they warn us of dangerous
trends; they point out potent evils.
(Foreword)
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
(...) abnormally chill relations between
Charlotte and her daughter. But the awful point
of the whole argument is this. It had become
gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during
our singular and bestial cohabitation that even
the most miserable of family lives was better
than the parody of incest, which, in the long run,
was the best I could oer the waif. (Part II, 32)
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
(...) and every movement she made, every
shue and ripple, helped me to conceal and
to improve the secret system of tactile
correspondence between beast and beauty
between my gagged, bursting beast and
the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent
cotton frock. (Part I, 13)
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
(...) the Lolita that today I could touch and smell
and hear and see, the Lolita of the strident voice
and rich brown hair of the bangs and the swirls
and the sides and the curls at the back, and the
sticky hot neck, and the vulgar vocabulary
revolting, super, luscious, goon, drip that
Lolita, my Lolita, poor Catullus would lose forever. So
how could I afford not to see her for two months of
summer insomnias? Two whole months out of the
two years of her remaining nymphage! (Part I, 15)
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
My prey trained animal She took
advantage.
Fey child young beast
Cruel negotiator
immortal demon monkey outrageously
pet ... when she treacherous Dolores
wanted to load a Haze
bird
question with
creature violent significance
nasty it was she who
claws seduced me.
CHARACTERS: LOLITA
How charming it was to see her, a child
herself, showing another child some of her
few accomplishments, such as for example
a special way of jumping rope. (P. II, 2).

childish despair (P. II, 3).

CHARACTERS: LOLITA AT 17
She was smoking herself. First time I saw her doing it. (Part II, 29)
(...) and there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-
veined narrow hands and her goose-esh white arms, and her
shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!),
hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby (...) I loved her
more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or
hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whi and
dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with
such cries in the past. (Part II, 29)
CHARACTERS: LOLITA AT 17

She groped for words. I supplied them

mentally (He broke my heart. You
merely broke my life). (Part II, 29)
 INTERTEXTUALITY

Reading Lolita in
Tehran,
by Azar Nafisi, 2003
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN
Take Lolita. This was the story of a twelve-year-old girl
who had nowhere to go. Humbert had tried to turn her
into his fantasy, into his dead love, and he had destroyed
her. The desperate truth of Lolita's story is not the rape of
a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation
of one individual's life by another. We don't know what
Lolita would have become if Humbert had not engulfed
her. Yet the novel, the finished work, is hopeful, beautiful
even, a defense not just of beauty but of life, ordinary
everyday life, all the normal pleasures that Lolita, like
Yassi, was deprived of.
READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN
no matter how repressive the state became, no
matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like
Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little
pockets of freedom. And like Lolita, we took every
opportunity to flaunt our insubordination: by showing a
little hair from under our scarves, insinuating a little
color into the drab uniformity of our appearances,
growing our nails, falling in love and listening to
forbidden music.
INTERTEXTUALITY

Misuse of the
concept Lolita
Would you be mine?I know what the I know that I'm a
Would you be my boys want, I'm not mess with my long
baby tonight? gonna play hair and my sun tan,
Could be kissing my Hey, Lolita, hey short dress, bare feet
fruit punch lips in the Hey, Lolita, hey I don't care what
bright sunshine they say about me,
Whistle all you want what they say about
'Cause I like you
quite a lot,
but I'm not gonna me Lolita,
say
everything you got, Because I know that Lana del
don't you know?
No more skipping
it's L.O.V.E.
Rey
It's you that I adore, rope, skipping heart You make me
though I make the beats with the boys happy, you make
(2012)
boys fall like downtown me happy
dominoes And I never listen to
Just you and me
feeling the heat anyone
Hey, Lolita, hey even when the sun
Hey, Lolita, hey goes down
My old man is a Give me them I'm not afraid to
bad man but gold coins, give say that I'd die
I can't deny the me them coins without him
way he holds my Who else is
hand My old man is a gonna put up Off to the
And he grabs me, thief and I'm with me this way? races,
he has me by my gonna stay and I need you, I Lana del
heart pray with him till breathe you, I'd
the end Rey (2012)
never leave you
Light of my life, fire But I trust in the They would rue
of my loins decision of the the day I was
Lord to watch alone without
Be a good baby, over us
do what I want you
Take him when he
Light of my life, fire may, if he may
of my loins
FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Did H.H. regret committing his

crimes?
Was he in love?
Can we judge an artwork by the
morals of its content?
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
(...) oh my poor, bruised child. I loved you. I
was a pentapod monster, but I loved you. I
was despicable and brutal, and turpid, and
everything, mais je taimais, je taimais! And
there were times when I knew how you felt,
and it was hell to know it, my little one. Lolita
girl, brave Dolly Schiller. (Part II, 32).