- Read the scholarly article Broodings on the Rhetoric of Lolita Article (the kind you will encounter in college sooner than you think and will have to use in your research papers, so, it may be challenging in some ways). It is jam-packed with insightful observations, some of which may be couched in jargon-laden or obscure prose, though. Make sure you give yourself enough time to read this article. You can’t read it in one sitting (at least, I sure could not unless my life depended on it).
- Be ready to discuss TWO places/ideas posited in the article: one from the first half and the second from the second half. IF jotting down your thoughts based on specific lines is what it takes for you to be able to write a quick but intelligently formulated in-class response next class then jot down your thoughts based on specific assertions and lines from the article.
This is what Nabokov wrote to his publisher regarding his wishes for the cover of Lolita. What do you think (especially based on the cover we have on our PDF and a quick glance at other editions you can find on Amazon?
“I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls. … Who would be capable of creating a romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic highway—that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl.”
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