The Humour of Vladimir Nabokov: Mind and Matter

Many critics classify Vladimir Nabokov as a highbrow humourist, a refined wordsmith overly fond of playful puzzles and private in-jokes whose art appeals primarily to an intellectually-sophisticated readership. This study presents a more balanced portrait, placing equal emphasis on the broader, earthier humour that is such a marked feature of Nabokov's writing, which draws on the human body and all things physical for its laughs: sex and scatology, farce and slapstick. Moving between the metaphysical and the physical, the cosmic and the comic, mind and matter, it presents Nabokov as a writer at home in both high and low forms of humour, a comedian who is capable of producing as many belly laughs as brainteasers, and of appealing to a much wider readership than is commonly supposed.

Author: Paul Benedict Grant
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 09/30/2024
Pages: 312
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9781399519212