Lectures On Literature
by Vladimir Nabokov (Fredson Bowers, Editor)
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Good+/Good+
- ISBN 10
- 0151495971
- ISBN 13
- 9780151495979
- Seller
-
Mulvane, Kansas, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Name inscribed FLEP, minimal library distinctions, pocket intact, scuffing to FLEP, corrected gutter, else, contents appear as nearly unblemished in Good+ blue cloth covered boards. DJ displays moderate surface/edge/wear, as shown, with reinforced chipping & small closed tears.
Introduction by John Updike and Edited by Fredson Bowers. Nabokov"s noted lectures on Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, and James Joyce, delivered at Wellesley and Cornell University.
KIRKUS REVIEW; Not really essays, not genial and general E. M. Forster-ish talks either, nor stirring defenses nor rhetorical destructions, these lectures Nabokov prepared and gave at Cornell in the Fifties are just that: he talks and reads, we listen (the same general approach--heirophant picking out the mystery from the dross--that Nabokov used in his own fiction); and literature is taken apart like a boxful of toys: "impersonal imagination and artistic delight," "the supremacy of the detail over the general, of the part that is more alive than the whole." There are diagrams and drawings, quiddities made visual: a map of Sotherton Court in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; exactly what kind of beetle Gregor Samsa turned into in "The Metamorphosis" the facade of 7 Eccles St., Bloom's house in Ulysses; what Odette's orchid looked like in Swann's Way. The more specific and crammed the writer, the more specific and crammed Nabokov's lecture: Dickens, Flaubert, Joyce. He finds Bleak House's tricks delicious, the richness and the pity; in Ulysses he swats away the Freudian interpretations ("a thousand and one nights [made] into a convention of Shriners") in favor of the devilish intricacy of Joycean synchronicity: "the hopeless past, the ridiculous and tragic present, and the pathetic future." Where sheer lush orchestration is less the thing, Nabokov falls back on thematic layering and transformation; before Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" he is almost brief, enchantedly synopsizing although with microscopic attention still. In Nabokov a crankiness is always near the surface (here he rants against movies, even music); and he betrays a certain anxiety by detailing so much, as though a great work might try and fool him: there's something at the same time eccentric and regimental to his appreciation. But finally there is a personal, fussy, high rapture to these lessons and illustrations, not quite analytical (Nabokov was too defensive and contentious for analysis--maybe too brilliant, too)--more a delight in literature-as-camouflage. Distinctive and demanding. Oversize
Insurance & handling is included free. Extra Charges/Fees apply on Shipments Outside The U.S. and Expedited Shipments. Oversize and/or heavy books may require additional fees. Will advise Updated 9.30.2023 Updated 6.16.2022 #3622-50319
Synopsis
For two decades, first at Wellesley and then at Cornell, Nabokov introduced undergraduates to the delights of great fiction. Here, collected for the first time, are his famous lectures, which include Mansfield Park, Bleak House, and Ulysses. Edited and with a Foreword by Fredson Bowers; Introduction by John Updike; illustrations.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Eve's Reads (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- #3622-50319
- Title
- Lectures On Literature
- Author
- Vladimir Nabokov (Fredson Bowers, Editor)
- Book Condition
- Used - Good+
- Jacket Condition
- Good+
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Ed, 1st Prtg
- Binding
- Hardcover
- ISBN 10
- 0151495971
- ISBN 13
- 9780151495979
- Publisher
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
- Place of Publication
- New York, NY
- Date Published
- 1980
- Pages
- 385
- Keywords
- Literature
Terms of Sale
Eve's Reads
Shipping/Handling/Insurance/Tracking Included within the continental U.S. (Free Shipping). Extra Charges/Fees apply on ALL Shipments Outside The U.S. and Expedited Shipments. Oversize and/or heavy books require additional fees. Will advise and will send invoice via Paypal for extra charges.
About the Seller
Eve's Reads
About Eve's Reads
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- Chipping
- A defect in which small pieces are missing from the edges; fraying or small pieces of paper missing the edge of a paperback, or...
- Good+
- A term used to denote a condition a slight grade better than Good.
- Cloth
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- Gutter
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- Inscribed
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