Second session (15:30-17:30) | Back to programme
By Luc Herman & Bart Vervaeck
Abstract
Pnin (1957) by Vladimir Nabokov evokes norms and values that derive from various periods and places, ranging from pre-revolutionary Russia to 1950s America. At its heart is the academic experience as lived and perceived by the central character, Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, a professor of Russian at Waindell College, a not-so fictional university in the United States. We will primarily analyse Nabokov's novel as an intratextual process of negotiation and circulation, investigating whether and, if so, how its configuration might refigure the cultural templates that structure the narrative. In our assessment of this process, we may also turn to extratextual elements such as authorial image and the book's reception.
Personal page Luc Herman
Personal page Bart Vervaeck
