Narration and interpretation : Lolita the cultural icon and American fantasy

Abstract

This dissertation, through the analysis of the rhetoric of the novel, will look into how the unreliable narrator creatively impacts adaptations of the book into film and other art forms such as music. Ultimately, this dissertation will analyse how these adaptations, add to paratextual elements which impact readers’ ongoing interpretations. The dissertation will first look at how Humbert Humbert, through his unreliable voice, presents an image of Dolores Haze as his ‘Lolita’, one which has become the dominant image of the character. Indeed, people know her as Lolita and not as Dolores, and this is because the image which was created by Humbert is the one people have accepted. Dolores Haze is thus split into two personas: her true identity and the one Humbert creates of her. Through an analysis of the novel, this research will also look into the portrayal of Dolores Haze, specifically the perception of the men who control Dolores’s image through interpretation, film adaptations, and music. This can be seen in both film adaptations of the novel, the first released in 1962 and the latest in 1997, directed by Stanley Kubrick and Adrain Lyne respectively. Both films have received significant criticism for how they portray this particular age-gap “relationship”. The directors of both films are men, and this in itself poses challenging questions regarding their interpretations of the novel and their intentions, especially in light of how the story of Dolores is often romanticised and sexualised. Romanticising the plot and regarding it as a love story is particularly troublesome because, as a result, the glorification of age-gap relationships has affected how the novel is interpreted today. The films’ increasing popularity, and the consequent cult following of Nabokov’s original work, has over the years this has resulted in several references to Lolita in music. The artist Lana Del Rey is here seen as emblematic of this trend, and often references the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov in her music and musical persona. The character of Lolita, a young girl who is sexually involved with an older man, has been an inspiration for Del Rey’s music and visuals. This dissertation will look into how these elements outside of the novel impact readers’ interpretations through the creation of a shared preconception that often reduces the novel’s plot and narrative technique. This dissertation will also focus on whether all these different elements analysed set out the novel to be feminist or misogynistic.