The Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures presents:
“Comedies of the Flesh:
Sexual Humor in Nabokov”
A lecture by
Paul Grant
Associate Professor of English at Memorial University of Newfoundland
Thursday, November 14, 11:00 A.M.
Newcomb Hall 480
Open to faculty, students & the public
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Vladimir Nabokov’s fondness for sexual humor is no secret; nor is his penchant for tackling taboo topics
in his fiction. These two elements meet to outrageous effect in the book for which Nabokov is best known:
"Lolita", a novel notorious not only for its subject matter – the sexual relationship between a twelve-yearold girl and a middle-aged pedophile - but its humor. "Lolita" was in many ways a watershed for Nabokov,
and he followed its success by writing more exuberantly comic novels based on strongly sexual subject
matter of an equally provocative and increasingly explicit kind: homosexuality and pederasty in "Pale
Fire", incest in "Ada", serial adultery in "Transparent Things", and a narrator in "Look at the
Harlequins!" who’s literally lost count of the number of wives he’s had. This talk will address several
questions: What attracted Nabokov to sexual humor? What forms of sexual humor did he use, and why?
How much of a risk did he take in approaching abnormal forms of sexuality humorously? Was his use of
sexual humor a way for him to gain control of subconscious fears and anxieties about sex, as some critics
have suggested, or was it simply a means of keeping salacious readers entertained?
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For questions, please contact Anna Kromin ([email protected])
Department Website: www.virginia.edu/~slavic/