Mar 28, 2024  
College Catalog 2017-2018 
    
College Catalog 2017-2018 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

RUSS 245 - Nabokov

Cross-Listed as ENGL 245  
The scandal surrounding Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel about the nymphet Lolita finally made him a hugely successful celebrity, allowing him to retire from teaching at Cornell University and move to Switzerland to devote himself to fiction, translation, criticism and lepidoptery. This was only one of the many metamorphoses Nabokov underwent while in exile, moving from Russia to the Crimea, Cambridge UK, Berlin, Paris, Cambridge MA, Ithaca, Hollywood, and finally Montreux. Members of the Russian nobility, the Nabokovs lost everything with the 1917 Revolution except for their immense cultural capital, which Nabokov transformed into a tremendously productive career as a writer, critic, translator and scholar in Russian, French, and English. This course examines both the Russian (in translation) and English novels. A merciful defier of national, linguistic, cultural and theoretical categories, Nabokov remains paradoxically elusive and monumental, a thrilling and exasperating genius. Alternate spring semesters. (4 Credits)

Curricular Change: Course renumbered from 366 to 245, effective spring 2018