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Article published In:
Contexts of Russian Literary Translation
Edited by Julie Hansen and Susanna Witt
[Translation and Interpreting Studies 11:1] 2016
► pp. 81–99

Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita

Text, paratext, and translation

This article addresses the relationship between text and paratext in the publication history of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. Such paratexts include Nabokov’s own afterword to the 1958 American edition and his postscript (published in 1967) to his own translation of Lolita into Russian, as well as various introductions and afterwords, both in English-language editions and in translations of Lolita into Russian and other languages. A particularly interesting type of paratext is constituted by annotations to the main text, and the analysis focuses on parallel examples published in annotated editions of Lolita in English, Russian, Polish, German, Ukrainian, and French. The analysis shows that the most detailed annotations concerning the totality of the English and Russian Lolita text and paratexts can be found in editions published in languages other than English and Russian, whereas most English or Russian editions seem to focus on the respective language version. There is still no complete, annotated edition of the bilingual text containing all the authorial paratexts.

Keywords: annotations, paratext, Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, English, Russian
Published online: 31 March 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.11.1.05amb
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Cited by (2)

Cited by 2 other publications

Al Saideen, Bassam, Ahmad S. Haider & Linda S. Al-Abbas
2022. Erotizing Nabokov’s Lolita in Arabic: How Translation Strategies Shift Themes and Characterization of Literary Works. Open Cultural Studies 6:1 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Denissova, Nilüfer
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