Vladimir Nabokov’s novel “Lolita” as intertext

Abstract

   The article analyzes Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel “Lolita” from the point of view of its intertextual connections. “Lolita” is studied as a hypertext, that is, a work that has absorbed reminiscences from another work, in this case from the poem “Annabel Lee” by the American writer and poet Edgar Allan Pо. In Nabokov’s novel, there is not only a reference to this poem, but also its direct quotation, the use of the main character’s name, Annabel Lee. The scene of the hero and heroine’s solitary meeting seems to illustrate some lines of the poem. Moreover, the characters’ obsession with the girl and her premature
death are the same. “Lolita” became a hypothetical text, that is, the text that served as a source for borrowing, by the end of the twentieth century. The article explores intertextual connections of the novel with the contemporary works of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Liosa “In Praise of the Stepmother” and the Iranian writer Azar Nafisi “Reading Lolita in Tehran”. If the former uses a mirror plot (“Lolita” on the contrary), the latter interprets Nabokov’s novel symbolically, becoming a banner of freedom against religious fanaticism.