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Reading Queneau Reading Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov & France
31st May 2013
Simon Rowberry
More than contemporaries?
Textual comparisons are far more fruitful
Writing Under Constraint
Potential Literature
The procedure is the message
Potential Literature in Nabokov
Word Golf
Lass
Mass
Mars
Mare
Male
Potential Reading
Interpretive
Creative
Occasionally oulipian
Generative
Potential Reading For Digital Nabokov Studies• Did Nabokov successfully disguise his
authorship of Lolita?• Does Nabokov’s fictional world expand with
his geographical expansion?• How do we best represent the experience
of discovery through re-reading and re-re-reading Nabokov's dense and enigmatic texts?
• What if Shade wrote the commentary to Kinbote's magnum opus?
Deformative Reading
"A deformative procedure puts the reader in a highly idiosyncratic relation to the work. This consequence could scarcely be avoided, since deformance sends both reader and work through the textual looking glass. On the other side customary rules are not completely short-circuited, but they are held in abeyance, to be chosen among (there are many systems of rules), to be followed or not as one decides. Deformative moves reinvestigate the terms in which critical commentary will be undertaken"
(Samuels & McGann 1999:36).
N+7• Algorithm for potential literature by
Lescure• Requires a text and a dictionary• The size of the dictionary affects the
result• 7 is arbitrary but useful
Lolita + 7
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
"Lolita, light-year of my lifetime, firecracker of my longings. My single-decker, my south. Lo-left-winger-ta: the tirade of the toot taking a triumph of three stepparents dowse the pallet to tar, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Left-winger. Ta. “
Deformative Pale Fire
N(S) + K + 7
N(S) – Shade’s text
K – Kinbote’s text
Derformative Pale Fire
I was the Shakespeare of the wealthy slayerBy the famous back in the wingerI was the snake of asking flute--and ILived on, flew on, in the refreshed slain,And from the insomnia, too, I'd dwellMyself, my landing, an appraisal on a play:Uncurtaining the nightshirt, I'd let darwinian glassmanHang all the fury above the gratitude,And how demented when a fame of snubCovered my glitter of Lazurchik and reached up soAs to make chambers and bedroom exactly standUpon that soap, out in that culminated landscaper!
