The Humour of Vladimir Nabokov

The first in-depth study of Vladimir Nabokov’s humour, investigating its physical aspects such as farce, slapstick, sexual and scatological humour

• Offers the first in-depth study of Nabokov’s humour
• Presents a revisionist reading of Nabokov
• Examines the metaphysical aspects of Nabokov’s humour
　
• Examines the sexual and scatological aspects of Nabokov’s humour
• Applies humour theory (e.g. those of Hobbes, Bergson, Freud) to Nabokov’s texts
• Compares Nabokov’s humour to that of his Russian predecessors (e.g. Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov) and to literary humourists such as Rabelais, Swift, Joyce

Many critics classify Vladimir Nabokov as a highbrow humourist, a refined wordsmith overly fond of playful puzzles and private in-jokes whose art appeals primarily to an intellectually-sophisticated readership. This study presents a more balanced portrait, placing equal emphasis on the broader, earthier humour that is such a marked feature of Nabokov’s writing, which draws on the human body and all things physical for its laughs: sex and scatology, farce and slapstick. Moving between the metaphysical and the physical, the cosmic and the comic, mind and matter, it presents Nabokov as a writer at home in both high and low forms of humour, a comedian who is capable of producing as many belly laughs as brainteasers, and of appealing to a much wider readership than is commonly supposed.