Final Paper Topic! -- "The Assembly of Zembla"

Ok. I haven't been blogging as consistently as I should, but now, with the pressing issue of the upcoming term paper, I will re-stoke that fire and get back to it. After the mention by Dr. Sexson of Kinbote and the commentary of Pale Fire as a parody of Literary Criticism I discovered that this is my topic of choice-- How Nabokov parodies lit. crit. keeping in mind that parody is a game and satire is a lesson. To explore the depths of this topic more I will (Ironically) be using some literary criticism to explore the topic. Mainly, keeping along with the theme of criticism, I will investigate and integrate some theories from the Reader Response field.

One particular avenue that I would like to pursue is how the critic is sort of the parasite who tags his/her who clutches onto the coattails of the artist & subject as they move into the space of immortality, the refuge of art.

Another topic of interest to this paper could be the metafictional appeals of the subjects within the stories to sway the reader and the characters awareness of the readers abilities in remembering their legacy (ie: H.H. in Lolita referring to the narrative as a trial where the reader is his jury) . Nabokov has his characters confronting the reader and attempting to sway the reader and, in effect, making attempts to change the nature and direction of criticism. However, investigating this too deeply may be trying to fry too many fish in one pan.

For this paper I would like to make it formal, but, really playful-- keeping in the true sense of Nabokov. It would be fun to even try to hide in some references and an acrostic... :)

It seems to me that a good title for this paper might be "The Assembly of Zembla". I really like effect of the A & Z and the mention of Zembla as a sort of idealistic and grotesque example of literary criticism and interpretation gone awry (but with fantastic results!).