| By the time of his death in 1977, the Russian-born writer Vladimir Nabokov had already become one of the most important and influential novelists of the twentieth century. Since then, the critical appreciation of his works has continued to grow steadily, but it is only recently that criticism has looked beyond the cleverness and bold aestheticism of Nabokov's work to perceive its equally strong ethical and metaphysical aspects.; This dissertation explores a crucially under-examined religious dimension in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov---namely, the significant appearance and development of diabolism as a deep-seated motif and far-ranging theme in a number of his works. As an interdisciplinary project in literary criticism and religious studies, it endeavors to recognize and to assess Nabokov's thoroughgoing recourse to "the demonic" as a rich and still-vital symbolic category of moral and spiritual concern. By examining selected novels by Nabokov, starting primarily with Lolita (1955) and continuing through the author's late, English-language period (Ada, Transparent Things), this dissertation argues that Nabokov's art represents a theologically significant "phenomenology of the demonic." This is to say that, in his narratives, Nabokov not only frequently evokes figures of the demonic (e.g., in the form of devils, sprites, ghosts, lamiae, and wicked men) but that he also reveals, with penetrating insight, the deeper structures of moral evil, very often precisely by means of such demonic imagery. These ethical revelations, then, constitute the true meaning and "virtue" of his literary devils.; Ultimately, this study demonstrates the enduring power of the narrative imagination to revise, renovate, and expand the meaning of potentially outmoded theological notions---particularly those concerning the nature and agency of evil, the enthralling power of desire, the meaning of Hell and damnation, and the twinned dangers of diabolical temptation and self-deception. Overall, the dissertation brings an ethical treatment of Nabokov's sophisticated fictional works into line with William James's compelling observation that "the world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck."... |
