Nabokov's Theatrical Imagination
Cambridge University Press, 1/12/2012
EAN 9781107015456, ISBN10: 1107015456
Hardcover, 228 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm
Language: English
Drawing on a wealth of unpublished archival material, this study offers a comprehensive assessment of the importance of theatrical performance in Vladimir Nabokov's thinking and writing.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 émigré writer Sirin to the American novelist Nabokov.
Introduction
1. Trying theatre
Nabokov's playwriting
2. Theatre on trial
Nabokov's dramaturgy
3. Thresholds and transgressions
The Man from the USSR, The Event and Invitation to a Beheading
4. Theatre dreams
The Tragedy of Mr Morn, The Waltz Invention and Invitation to a Beheading
5. Puppets and masks
King, Queen, Knave and Despair
6. Shakespeare's Ghost
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 'That in Aleppo Once…' and Bend Sinister
Conclusion
performing identity
Bibliography
Index.