Allusions and Play in the Novel by Vladimir Nabokov “The King, Queen, Jack” Cover Image

Аллюзии и игра в романе Владимира Набокова «Король, дама, валет»
Allusions and Play in the Novel by Vladimir Nabokov “The King, Queen, Jack”

Author(s): Natalija G. Vladimirova, Ekaterina S. Kupriyanova, Joanna Mianowska
Subject(s): Comparative Study of Literature, French Literature, Russian Literature, Theory of Literature
Published by: Петрозаводский государственный университет
Keywords: Nabokov; Flaubert; Anderson; poetics of game; allusions; image; mirror; puppets; mannequins; wax figures;

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the diversity and variability of the game, as well as the allusions of Anderson and Flaubert (the novel “Mrs. Bovary”), which play a defining role in the poetics of the novel. It is established that being the forms of a secondary artistic conventionality, they led to the rejection by the author of a logocentric principle and correspondence of literature and life, as Nabokov repeatedly stated emphasizing their non-equivalence. The novel “the King, the Lady, the Jack”, the least studied from this point of view of the socalled “Russian” novels is chosen for research. As a result of the study the game is profiled and systematized, its ontological and agonistic varieties are identified, a poetological role of the game in meaning-making and plot creation is assessed as well as transitions from the real artistic world to the interim world of human semblance (the process of “necrosis” of the main characters, turns them into puppets, mannequins, wax figures in a shop window and Museum of criminology).

  • Issue Year: 17/2019
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 162-177
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Russian