Ardor or Ada? Authority, Artifice, and Ambivalence in Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor
Journal: The Sydney eScholarship Repository (The University of Sydney)
Year: 2019

This thesis argues for a number of fresh readings of and perspectives on Nabokov’s Ada. I am, however, equally interested in how Nabokov is read more generally, and argue against some of the worst habits of Nabokov scholarship to date. Nabokov’s own authority over how his works are to be read “correctly” is largely unquestioned by a great number of influential Nabokovians, chief among them Brian Boyd. Still, at least since Michael Wood’s The Magician’s Doubts, there has been enough work to chall