Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-c9gpj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-13T03:36:52.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Film and narration: two versions of Lolita

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2010

By
Robert Stam
Edited by
R. Barton Palmer
Robert Stam
Affiliation:
University Professor, New York University
R. Barton Palmer
Affiliation:
Clemson University, South Carolina
Get access

Summary

As Wayne Booth points out in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983), we react to narrators as we do to persons, finding them likeable or repulsive, wise or foolish, fair or unfair. Narrators vary widely on a broad spectrum, not only in terms of likeability but also in terms of reliability. Some are honest brokers, while others are pathological liars. On a scale of trustworthiness, narrators range from those who are almost completely suspect (such as Jason Compson in The Sound and the Fury [1929]) to those who are more or less reliable (Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby [1925], Bras Cubas in Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas [1880]) to those who serve as dramatized spokespersons for the implied author and whose values conform to the norms of the text (Joseph Conrad's Marlow in Heart of Darkness [1902]).

What interests me here is a particular kind of narration, to wit unreliable narration. The modern period has been especially fond of 1) changing narrators and 2) unreliable narrators. Changing narrators alter their discourse and ideas as they narrate; they mutate before our eyes. This trait is especially true of the Bildungsroman or novel of development (for example, Great Expectations [1851]); part of the plot, in such novels, is not just what happens but how the narrator changes as a result of what happens, for example when Pip learns about the true source of his fortune.

Type
Chapter
Information
Twentieth-Century American Fiction on Screen , pp. 111 - 131
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appel, Alfred Jr., Nabokov's Dark Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
Booth, Wayne, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chion, Michel, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, trans. and ed. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Corliss, Richard, Lolita (London: BFI, 1995).Google Scholar
Davies, Robertson, “Mania for Green Fruit,” Victoria Daily Times, January 17, 1959.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir, Despair (New York: Capricorn Press, 1966).Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir, The Enchanter, trans. Nabokov, Dimitri (1977) (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1986).Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita (New York: Berkeley, 1977).Google Scholar
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita: A Screenplay (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×