Thursday, August 11, 2011

Is the tone of Nabokov's Lolita satirical?

Tone is always difficult to figure out with a first-person narrator. I'd say that overwhelmingly, the tone of the narrator of Lolita is whimsical, neurotic, wistful, desperate. Of the four choices you give 'reflective' fits best. But there are some moments in which one could hear some irony on the part of Nabokov towards Humbert Humbert -- for instance, the fact that Humbert likes the poetry of Poe. Nabokov would have thought this in poor taste. I don't think there is anything satirical about Lolita.

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