Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination

by Frank, Siggy

• ISBN13: 9781107015456
• ISBN10: 1107015456
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-29
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Drawing on a wealth of unpublished archival material, this study offers a comprehensive assessment of the importance of theatrical performance in Vladimir Nabokov's thinking and writing. Siggy Frank provides fresh insights into Nabokov's wider aesthetics and arrives at new readings of his narrative fiction. As well as emphasising the importance of theatrical performance to our understanding of Nabokov's texts, she demonstrates that the theme of theatricality runs through the central concerns of Nabokov's art and life: the nature of fiction, the relationship between the author and his fictional world, textual origin and derivation, authorial control and textual property, literary appropriations and adaptations, and finally the transformation of the writer himself from the Russian migr writer Sirin to the American novelist Nabokov.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vi
Note on transliteration and translation	p. viii
List of abbreviations	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Trying theatre: Nabokov's playwriting	p. 18
Theatre on trial: Nabokov's dramaturgy	p. 47
Thresholds and transgressions: The Man from the USSR, The Event and Invitation to a Beheading	p. 67
Theatre dreams: The Tragedy of Mr Morn, The Waltz Invention and Invitation to a Beheading	p. 101
Puppets and masks: King, Queen, Knave and Despair	p. 130
Shakespeare's ghost: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, '"That in Aleppo Once ...'" and Bend Sinister	p. 156
Conclusion: performing identities	p. 187
Bibliography	p. 195
Index	p. 213
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