On the Nabokovian Resonance of “The Proustian Theme in a Letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey”

In this paper I examine the ramifications of doubling and repetition in Nabokov’s Lolita, with reference to Proustian notions of recollection, which are adumbrated in the novel at various occasions, such as Humbert’s claim to have written an academic paper titled “The Proustian theme in a letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey.” I begin by tracing out the contours of what such an article might have been like and then I apply these points to a reading of Lolita.