Creative Madness and Paranoia in Vladimir Nabokov's novels "Lolita" and "Pale fire"

Essay , 2011 , 26 Pages , Grade: 1.2

English Language and Literature Studies - Literature

The clinical picture of paranoid narcissism and its inherent contradictions provides a particularly useful framework for revisiting Nabokov’s work. The premise that the novels are studies of paranoid selves, who suffer from an interpretive delirium that rejects the real in order to impose meaning, has not been explored in sufficient depth to date. A more developed understanding of the pathology of paranoia and schizophrenia as delusional disorders helps to elucidate that the protagonists are locked in internally consistent systems of false beliefs. Their alternating states of grandeur and persecution are an implicit critique of Modernism’s tendency to professionalize artists and art criticism.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Doublings and Mirrors

Stylization of the Self

Solipzising the Other

The Blindness of Desire

The Madman as Genius

Paranoid Writers - Paranoid Readers

Double-Dealing of the Mind

The Paranoid Interpreter

Paranoid Criticism

Notes

• College: Durham University
• Grade: 1.2
• Author: Dr. Sabine Mercer (Author)
• Publication Year: 2011
• Pages: 26
• Catalog Number: V417229
• ISBN (eBook): 9783668666832
• ISBN (Book): 9783668666849
• Language: English
• Tags: Nabokov, Lolita, Pale Fire, Modernism, Literary Criticism, Paranoia, Delusion, Narcissism, Baudelaire, Dandyism, Doubles, Camp, Desire, Creative Madness, Dionysus Myth, Psychosis