THINKING RUSSIAN WRITTING ENGLISH: TEXTUAL TRACES OF AN ÈMIGRE'S CONFLICT

Authors

  • Beatriz Perñas Ibañez

Keywords:

Language and communication, migration and exile, bilingualism, code switching vs. identitys witching, location, dissemination of culture, semiotics of culture and art

Abstract

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) is considered a bilingual writer because, after having published in Russian for the first twenty years of his career, he switched to English to write his first English-language novel The Real life of Sebastian Knight (1941). On the basis of a twofold analysis of the reasons -emigration and exile which made this radical change necessary and the consequences transculturation brought to Nabokov 'S life and art, my paper explores the interpendence between language and creativity, between identity and culture and, finally, between history and fiction. In dealing with Nabokov 'S individual biography it is possible to trace the conflicts and changes in cultural dominance that characterise the twentieth century and, more specifically, the relations between Europe and the USA. It is also possible to understand better those facts and factors which, being historical, penetrate fiction and develop it into a fiction of double identities and postmodernist ethics and aesthetics.

Author Biography

Beatriz Perñas Ibañez

Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana Universidad de Zaragoza

Issue

Section

Artículos