Pale Fire

Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures in a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade.

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Pale Fire

A novel constructed around the last great poem of a fictional American poet, John Shade, and an account of his death. The poem appears in full and the narrative develops through the lengthy, and increasingly eccentric, notes by his posthumous editor.

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Nabokov s Pale Fire

Pale Fire is regarded by many as Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece. The novel has been hailed as one of the most striking early examples of postmodernism and has become a famous test case for theories about reading because of the apparent impossibility of deciding between several radically different interpretations. Does the book have two narrators, as it first appears, or one? How much is fantasy and how much is reality? Whose fantasy and whose reality are they? Brian Boyd, Nabokov's biographer and hitherto the foremost proponent of the idea that Pale Fire has one narrator, John Shade, now rejects this position and presents a new and startlingly different solution that will permanently shift the nature of critical debate on the novel. Boyd argues that the book does indeed have two narrators, Shade and Charles Kinbote, but reveals that Kinbote had some strange and highly surprising help in writing his sections. In light of this interpretation, Pale Fire now looks distinctly less postmodern--and more interesting than ever. In presenting his arguments, Boyd shows how Nabokov designed Pale Fire for readers to make surprising discoveries on a first reading and even more surprising discoveries on subsequent readings by following carefully prepared clues within the novel. Boyd leads the reader step-by-step through the book, gradually revealing the profound relationship between Nabokov's ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, and metaphysics. If Nabokov has generously planned the novel to be accessible on a first reading and yet to incorporate successive vistas of surprise, Boyd argues, it is because he thinks a deep generosity lies behind the inexhaustibility, complexity, and mystery of the world. Boyd also shows how Nabokov's interest in discovery springs in part from his work as a scientist and scholar, and draws comparisons between the processes of readerly and scientific discovery. This is a profound, provocative, and compelling reinterpretation of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

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Pale Fire

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Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Book Analysis

Unlock the more straightforward side of Pale Fire with this concise and insightful summary and analysis! This engaging summary presents an analysis of Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. The book takes its name from a 999-line poem by the celebrated American poet John Shade, which is accompanied by a lengthy commentary by his editor Charles Kinbote. After Shade’s untimely death, Kinbote contrives to secure the rights to edit the poem from his widow, but much of the commentary that follows is focused on his own preoccupations and paranoia, particularly with regard to his homeland of Zembla. The resulting work is a brilliant piece of metafiction which showcases Nabokov’s mastery of style and form and leaves the reader continually unsure of Kinbote’s true identity and relationship to John Shade. Find out everything you need to know about Pale Fire in a fraction of the time! This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you: • A complete plot summary • Character studies • Key themes and symbols • Questions for further reflection Why choose BrightSummaries.com? Available in print and digital format, our publications are designed to accompany you on your reading journey. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time. See the very best of literature in a whole new light with BrightSummaries.com!

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Uncovering the Hidden Plot in Vladimir Nabokov s Pale Fire

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The Darker Shades of Pale Fire

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Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov's extraordinary literary career, as a master of Russian and English prose, is unique. Acclaimed in the limited Russian emigre world, under the name of Sirin, Nabokov switched to writing in English and settled in America, a refugee from Hitler's Europe. Exile, memory, lost love and the magic of childhood are among his themes. Neil Cornwell's study, published for the Nabokov centenary, examines five of Nabokov's major novels, plus his short stories and critical writings, situating his work against the ever-expanding mass of VN scholarship, and noting his cultural debt to Russia, Europe, America and the British Isles.

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A Study of Mirror Analogues in Vladimir Nabokov s Pale Fire

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1 Forms of Re creation in Nabokov s Pale Fire 2 Charles Dickens and Gothic Fiction 3 Making it New

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Pale Fire

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PALE FIRE

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William Shakespeare in Vladimir Nabokov s Lolita and Pale Fire

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Reading the Transtextual in Vladimir Nabokov s Pale Fire A S Byatt s Babel Tower and Henry James s The Figure in the Carpet

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The European Nabokov

Robin Davies here demonstrates that Nabokov’s Pale Fire has a classical unity and represents a direct attack on T.S. Eliot’s philosophical position, particularly as given in The Waste Land and as represented by Eliot’s later tendency for conservatism in literature, politics, and religion. After Nabokov was forced into exile from Germany and then France in the 1930s with his young son and Jewish wife, Eliot’s passivism must have seemed to him the very antithesis of survival. The enigmatic Pale Fire and its surface triviality suggested that there could be self-consistent logic within the obvious commentary of Charles Kinbote and John Shade’s poem. Davies places this work in its vast European context, forming a bridge between Russian and Europeanliterature which will be appreciated by scholars of both.

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Making Ornaments of Accidents and Possibilities

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Pale Fire

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Pale Fire

This thesis confronts the gravity of reading, re-reading, and misreading. It shouts into the abyss when only a waning echo responds. It pleas for architecture and literature to rekindle a dormant romance flickering at dusk. It acknowledges the shadow cast by a building and the minor thrown in its shade. It advocates the mythic. It meditates "... on finitude and failure." Transcending architecture and literature, metaphors parallel human existence in both its most banal and harrowingly crystallizing moments. While architecture determines the experience of the spaces we inhabit, literature provides context stemming from multiple intangible dimensions, anchoring us to the unshakable human condition. Through uniting the two, a new "language" emerges.

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Combinational Delight

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Vladimir Nabokov s Pale Fire and Laurence Sterne s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy Gent

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