Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and lepidopterist whose works include Lolita and Pale Fire.
Russian literature: Literature written in Russian, spanning works from medieval texts to contemporary writing. Nabokov began his literary career in Russian and reworked its traditions in exile.
Lolita: Nabokov’s 1955 novel about Humbert Humbert, a predatory adult who narrates his abuse of a young girl. Its seductive first-person narration makes style and moral judgment difficult to separate.
Véra Nabokov: Nabokov’s wife, editor, translator, and close literary collaborator. She supported his writing and managed many practical and editorial aspects of his career.
Lepidoptery: The scientific study of butterflies and moths, including their classification, anatomy, and evolution. Nabokov’s collecting and taxonomic research made this field a lifelong pursuit.
Lolita controversy: The public dispute surrounding the publication, censorship, and reception of Nabokov’s novel Lolita. The controversy helped make the novel internationally famous while shaping debates about its subject and style.
Modernism: A broad movement that challenged inherited forms and conventions in art and literature. His formal experiments connect his fiction with modernist innovations.
Pale Fire: Nabokov’s 1962 novel structured as a poem, commentary, foreword, and index. Its invented editor turns annotation into a competing narrative.
Edmund Wilson: An American literary critic and editor who became a prominent public intellectual. His friendship and later dispute with Nabokov centered on translating Pushkin.
Polyommatini: A tribe of butterflies in the gossamer-winged butterfly family, Lycaenidae. Nabokov studied and classified members of this butterfly group.
Nabokovian: An adjective describing features associated with Nabokov’s literary style, themes, or techniques. The term marks the influence of his intricate prose, games, and patterns of recurrence.