Queen, kinf and knave in lolita
King, Queen and Knave is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov in 1928, under his pen name, Sirin, while living in Berlin. It was originally written in Russian and eventually translated the same year by the author's son. Such a title suggests either a historical novel about Middle-Ages for instance, or a fairy tale. But it is neither a story of kings and queens, nor a fairy tale. It's a fiction about real people, a married couple and their nephew, a young man, who falls madly in love with his aunt. It is a love story such as you could find in real life. The title of this novel written twenty-two years before Lolita is very close the title suggested for this essay : « king, knave and princess ». To what extent do these three key words « king, knave and princess » refer to Nabokov's successful novel Lolita ? Is it a fairy tale or is presented as a true story ? Do we have to consider lolita as a princess or a queen ? If ever a princess, when does she become a queen and why ? Is it relevant to analyse a fiction of the fifties like a fairy tale ? We could argue that it can not be both a fiction about real charactres and a fairy tale, one being exclusive of the other because a fictionnal love story is expected to reflect reality as opposed to a world of fairies and princesses. This paper aims at showing that far from being exclusive in Lolita, both realistic narration and fairy tale are intricately linked in the stor, and serve the same purpose : guide and manipulate the readers' beliefs and disbeliefs, according to the narrator's desire.
The first part is devoted to the analysis of the interaction between the King with his kingdom, and the Princess in the novel. The second part deals with the Princess's and the King's metamorphosis into a Queen and a Knave. The last part will show to what extent fictional narration is intertwined with the 'fairy tale' in order to restaure a very human dimension towards the end.
Humbert Humbert