A Study Of Narrative Time In Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov is a famous Russia-born American writer, scholar and translator of the twentieth century. As his masterpiece, Lolita is generally considered as a post-modern classic studied at home and abroad. Researchers focus more on unreliable narration and narrative focalization of the novel than on narrative time. As an important part of narrative strategy, time is an issue that deserves attention in the examination of a novel. As for narrative time of a novel, narratologist Genette once gave a theoretical illustration in Narrative Discourse about the relation between "story time" and "narrative time" and put forward three important concepts:order, duration and frequency. Based on his theory of narrative time in Narrative Discourse, the thesis undertakes to make a narrative interpretation of Lolita to unravel the correlation between the themes and the temporal art.The thesis studies narrative time of Lolita from "order" "duration" and "frequency" by means of close reading of the text. The order is shown by the juxtaposition of prolepsis and analepsis. As a memoir fiction, Lolita is characterized by a significant analepsis with interwoven prolepsis to create an interlocking effect. The duration is defined by the alternation of ellipsis, pause, summary and scene. The fact that Lolita is a pure love story makes sense in that chasing and experiencing love are presented by pause and scene in Humbert’s memories of Lolita, while summary and ellipsis are mainly for experiences with characters such as Charlotte and Valeria. The frequency of Lolita is mainly characterized by repetitive and iterative narrative. These three aspects are interrelated with each other, which contributes to an organic unity of time strategy.In Lolita, order, duration and frequency are closely related to each other. The artistic treatment of narrative time is beneficial for the depiction of characters as well as the expression of the theme. The study of narrative time is a comprehensive study in investigating the relationship between story time and narrative time in order to reveal the importance of narrative time to the novel and understand the artistic features of the novel from the perspective of narratology.