Five Senses in Nabokov's Works

This collection of essays focuses on a subject largely neglected in Nabokovian criticism—the importance and significance of the five senses in Vladimir Nabokov’s work, poetics, politics and aesthetics. This text analyzes the crucial role of the author’s synesthesia and multilingualism in relation to the five senses, as well as the sensual and erotic dimensions of sensoriality in his works. Each chapter provides a highly focused and sometimes provocative approach to the unique role that sensory perceptions play in the shaping and narrating of Nabokov’s memories and in his creative process.

“The wide range of sensory experience that this volume considers, alongside its extensive coverage of Nabokov’s work from the early stories to the last unfinished novel, makes it a valuable resource and provocative basis for further investigation.” (Barbara Wyllie, Slavonic and East European Review SEER, Vol. 100 (3), July, 2022)

Marie Bouchet is Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Toulouse, France, and the author of Lolita: A Novel by Vladimir Nabokov, A Film by Stanley Kubrick (2009). She has co-edited two collections of essays on Lolita, and is in charge of the annotations to the novel for The Nabokovian.Julie Loison-Charles is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at Lille University, France, and has published a book on Nabokov’s use of foreign words (Vladimir Nabokov, ou l’écriture du multilinguisme: mots étrangers et jeux de mots, 2016). She has organized several conferences on Nabokov.Isabelle Poulin is Professor of Comparative Literature at Bordeaux Montaigne University, France, and author of several books on Nabokov. Her latest are Poétiques du récit d’enfance: Benjamin, Sarraute et Nabokov (2012) and Le Transport romanesque. Le Roman comme espace de la traduction, de Nabokov à Rabelais (2017).