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On Carnival Duality in Lolita

Author: BiChenRui
Tutor: HuangJianRen
School: Central South University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: Bakhtin carnival duality Lolita Humbert
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2007
Downloads: 442
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Abstract


Lolita, as Vladimir Nabokov’s favorite, has activated enthusiasm and endured controversy since its publication in 1955. This thesis attempts to explore his monumental novel Lolita with an approach of Bakhtin’s carnival theory in order to demonstrate the carnival duality infiltrating throughout the novel.Duality, as a basic concept of Bakhtin’s poetics and a basic category of his philosophical thought, is the soul of Bakhtin’s carnival system. According to Bakhtin, folk carnival in Middle Ages has a profound inherent duality, which first appears duality of the world, official or unofficial, coexisting in people’s consciousness. Then, it embodies in double sides of people’s personalities. To some extent, it is the dual life people live that determines their duality in nature. Hence, duality in carnival culture is the past and the future, death and rebirth, caducity and youth, subversion and invigoration; the two poles of everything co-exist in the double-faced image; duality is also represented in the carnival by the phenomenon of king-buffoon image through the rituals of crowning/decrowning.Taking a close look at Lolita, we can find that the novel is imbued with carnival duality. The thesis firstly gives an introduction of Nabokov’s experience, his personal background, the multiple literary environment affecting Nabokov’s ideas in his literary creation in order to illustrate how the possible elements have shaped his creation of Lolita.The main body of the thesis expounds the theoretical basis for subsequent analyses, involving a close textual analysis of carnival duality representation in Lolita. Lolita, as a book published by the unorthodoxy Olympia Press in Paris, is itself subversive of Roman Catholics in the United States; in the novel, the subversion of time is demonstrated; Humbert’s possession of Lolita embodies his nostalgia for the past time, and Lolita tries the time for a mature female in advance; thus Humbert and Lolita are a pair of lovers opposed by social morality; during their continental tour, she makes full use of his lust to extort money from him, and Humbert who is no less than a sexual slave constructs his own sexuality as passive and submissive before Lolita. This chapter also emphasizes how the protagonists play roles of carnival images to realize their rebirth by unfolding the ambivalent carnival laughter in the novel and the dualistic rituals crowning/decrowning incarnated by Humbert and Lolita.Finally, an analysis concerns the carnival imagery in Lolita, exploring how the characters function as carnival bodies. This thesis holds that the double images, Humbert and Quilty, mirroring each other are the main pair for the carnival atmosphere of the whole story; Humbert shows his dual nature of man and beast by coupling the past and the present, fantasy and reality; Lolita is a girl with dual existence—the idealistic and the realistic for Humbert, incorporating the dualities of tender childishness and eerie vulgarity.Based on the analysis above, the thesis points out that Lolita is a novel filled with carnival duality.

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