Lectures on Literature [Hardcover]

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Author), Fredson Bowers (Editor), John Updike (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1980 | ISBN-10: 0151495971 | ISBN-13: 978-0151495979 | Edition: 1st

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.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

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. (Kirkus Reviews ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born poet, novelist, literary critic, translator, and essayist was awarded the National Medal for Literature for his life's work in 1973. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. He is the author of many works including Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and Speak, Memory.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 385 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition (October 1, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151495971
• ISBN-13: 978-0151495979
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.8 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,749 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 7, 2002

By 

Zane Parks (Livermore, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lectures on Literature (Paperback)

In his opening lecture, Nabokov says, " ... great novels are great fairy tales -- and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales." The tales discussed are Austen's "Mansfield Park," Dickens' "Bleak House," Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Proust's "The Walk by Swann's Place," Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," and Joyce's "Ulysses." In addition, there are lectures "Good Readers and Good Writers," "The Art of Literature and Commonsense," and "L'Envoi" -- the first being his opening and the last being his closing comments on the course. These are lectures not polished by Nabokov for publication. There is a companion volume on Russian literature.

The examination of the works here is purely literary. The works are examined in minute detail. For example, in "The Metamorphosis," Nabokov goes to some length to determine what insect Gregor became. Not a cockroach, as some suggest, but rather a beetle. And he draws pictures. He wants us to understand the layout of the rooms in the Samsa flat. The devil -- that is, the art -- is in the details. Some might object that there is more to some of these works than is discerned by such a point of view. Granted, but nothing precludes looking elsewhere for (say) a more philosophical treatment of "The Metamorphosis," or God forbid, thinking about it on one's own.

In his closing comments, Nabokov says, "In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Time Travel: You Become His Student, April 4, 2006

By 

J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lectures on Literature (Paperback)

I would like to thank reviewer Bruce Kendall for pointing out this book to me. This is a great book.

By the way, I have one reservation about this book: it has seven chapters, one on each of seven novels, and do not read a chapter on one of the seven novel until you have read the novel. He gives lots of details and it will ruin your reading experience. Just read one novel at a time and then read Nakobov's lecture notes on that particular novel. The only exception might be "Ulysses" where most readers need help and often use a reading guide. He gives a very detailed analysis of the plot and characters for all seven works, and for one book - "The Metamorphosis" - the comments are almost as long as the 55 page story.

It would be quite an experience if one could sit in on the classes of say Saul Bellow in Chicago in the 1930s and 40s when he taught literature. He recommended Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Lawrence, Joyce, and Dreiser, among others. Anyway, this is the next best thing. It is the course notes with an introduction by John Updike on the course taught by Nabokov at Cornell around 1950 or so.

He was born in Russia but learned English and French at an early age. His father was murdered in Russia, and was carrying a copy of Madame Bovary at the time of his death.

He went to university in England but then lived in Germany for 15 years, and then came to the Boston area where he taught at Wellesley College as just an Assistant Prof. teaching Russian 201, a survey of Russian literature. He worked simultaneously at Harvard for about 10 years, but not in literature. He then got a position as Associate Prof. of Slavic Literature at Cornell.

Nabokov's main love was literature, but since he was not in the English Department, he could not teach American literature, so he gave courses on European literature. This book outlines course material prepared by Nabokov for courses 311-312, Masters of European fiction.

If you read this book, it is similar to taking his course. His approach is to examine a small number of books and look at each great detail. There is lots of analysis plus some sample exam questions at the back of the book.

His seven books are:

Jane Austen - Mansfield Park
Charles Dickens - Bleak House
Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary
Robert Louis Stevenson - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Marcel Proust - The Walk by Swann's Place
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis
James Joyce - Ulysses

This is an excellent lecture series prepared by Nabokov with his handwritten notes and sketches.

There is a note from him that he had more fun looking at the literature than the students. He was working on Lolita as he taught, and actually threw out the manuscript. His wife convinced him to continue and publish, and he was able to retire with the income from that book.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid example of Nabokov's literary perspective, July 6, 2008

By 

Steven A. Peterson (Hershey, PA (Born in Kewanee, IL)) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lectures on Literature (Paperback)

Some time back, I reviewed "Crime and Punishment" for Amazon. One of the commentators on my review suggested that I take a look at Vladimir Nabokov's critical analysis of Dostoevsky. So, via Amazon, I purchased Vladimir Nabokov's book, "Lectures in Literature." As luck would have it, this was not the volume covering Dostoevsky! However, I did take a look anyhow, my curiosity piqued by the comment on my review. The end result? A greater appreciation for Nabokov--and also a sense that I'm not apt to invest a great deal of time reading other of his literary analysis.

The essays in this book represent lectures that he gave at Wellesley College and Cornell University. The introductory comments note that (Page ix): "The fact cannot and need not be disguised that the texts for these essays represent Vladimir Nabokov's written-out notes for delivery as classroom lectures and that they cannot be recognized as a finished literary work. . . ." John Updike's Introduction also provides some context for this work. He notes that Nabokov's lectures provide (Page xxv): ". . .a dazzling demonstration, for those lucky Cornell students in the remote, clean-cut fifties, of the irresistible artistic sensibility." He also notes, in Nabokov's words, the truth of novels, that (Pages xxv-xxvi): ". . .great novels are great fairy tales--and the novels in this series are supreme fairy tales. . . ." Nabokov himself points out that a writer can be considered as (a) a storyteller, (b) a teacher, and (c) an enchanter (Page 5). And, above all, he values style and structure in authors' creations.

Maybe a few examples will illustrate his critical approach. First, Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park." Let me confess. . . . I'm not particularly excited about Jane Austen's work. However, Nabokov is very pleased with her work. Given his emphasis on style and structure, he details how well she constructs this work. For instance, at one point, the characters, among whom there are a variety of tensions to begin with, select a play to perform. The decision as to which of the characters in Austen's story would play which characters in the play is well discussed by Nabokov. The play itself raises questions--it was, in fact, an actual play that scandalized some of the characters in the novel. And it exacerbated pre-existing tensions among the characters. All in all, Nabokov makes a great case that Austen's structure of this segment of the novel was well done indeed. And, in terms of style, he says of Austen that (Page 59) "she handles it with perfection." As noted, I am not much excited by Austen's works, but Nabokov sure convinced me that she was a terrific technical writer, who wed her genius to technique and style and structure to create something special.

Briefly, I would also note that his examination of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" leaves him cold. He does not think that it holds together well and that the dichotomy of the characters works well.

Finally, Kafka's "Metamorphosis," a story I read several decades ago. I recall the sense of despair I felt reading about the travails of Gregor Samsa--and a sense that, despite the awful/offal nature of the work that there was something important here. Nabokov is very positive about this piece. Much of this lecture is a simple description of the work, scene by scene, and Nabokov spennds some time noting how Kafka's work is so much better than Stevenson's work discussed above. Samsa's unexplained transformation into a beetle is the event that triggers this story. Nabokov notes how this tragedy has positive elements--a family finally getting its act together even as it abandons Gregor--and illustrates Kafka's style. Of the latter, Nabokov says (Page 283): "You will mark Kafka's style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking contrast to the nightmare matter of his story."

He concludes this set of lectures by congratulating his students on their work--and making a few final points. He concludes (Pages 381-382): "I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotion of the people in the book but the emotions of its author--the joys and difficulties of creation."

I admire his emphasis on style and structure, but I also think there is an almost sanitary quality about some of his observations. Austen? I have found it difficult over decades to get any purchase on her works. Her style and structure doesn't make up for what I feel as an overly mannered style (I expect to get hammered for saying that!). Does one really need to know about her knowledge of a particular play to appreciate (or not appreciate) her novel? I don't know. I'm a political scientist--not a literary critic. Nonetheless, this is an exciting book, as one learns how a literary critic from one critical perspective examining a series of works--Austen, Dickens, Flaubert, Stevenson, Proust, Kafka, and Joyce. If interested in Nabokov's critical perspective, this is a good starting point!