Lolita, fiche de lecture

LOLITA, A CONTROVERSIAL BOOK

"Lolita" is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov and published in 1955. "Lolita" is told from the point of view of Humbert Humbert, an intellectual man and pedophile, who develops a love obsession with Dolores Haze, a 12-year-old girl. The novel explores the thoughts and emotions of Humbert Humbert as he pursues an inappropriate relationship with Lolita.

The main reason for the controversy surrounding "Lolita" is the sensitive subject of pedophilia. Some have accused Nabokov of indirectly normalising or justifying pedophilia by making Humbert Humbert attractive and giving voice to his disturbing thoughts.

Another disturbing element of the novel is the way it explores the sexualisation of children. The character of Dolores Haze is portrayed in a way that is both innocent and provocative, which creates narrative tension.

 Some readers felt that Nabokov was exploiting the character of Lolita as a sexual object, which contributes to the perpetuation of stereotypes about young girls.

The particularity of Nabokov's book is its style of narration, as the author chooses to take the point of view of the paedophile rather than the victim.  Nabokov chooses internal narration, not to make us feel empathy for his narrator, but precisely to highlight taboo subjects.

"Lolita" remains an extremely controversial novel because of its disturbing subject and Nabokov's treatment of it. The normalisation of paedophilia, the sexualisation of children and the critique of the hypersexualisation of society are all reasons that explains the controversy surrounding this book.

In view of these two completely failed adaptations, the figure of Lolita is demonised in popular culture, to the detriment of the victim she really is.

Moreover, the two film adaptations, released respectively in 1962 and 1997, definitively established in the collective imagination the idea of a seductive Lolita, far removed from the innocent 12-year-old girl depicted in the novel. On viewing the two films, it is clear that neither Stanley Kubrick nor Adrian Lyne understood the book they were adapting, or chose to make an adaptation that distorted the tragic nature of the subject.

The pop vision of Lolita has covered up the real story.

Moreover, we can see the feminist criticism that the typical case of sexual abuse is not that committed by a stranger but rather the abuse committed in the family unit. We might think that Lolita is a teaser, a perverse girl highlighted by the films but Lolita is a poor girl martyred by a perverse.

I think we have to differentiate Humbert Humbert from the man who wrote the work

Since its publication in 1955, "Lolita" has been both acclaimed by some critics for its literary style and complexity, but it has also been heavily criticised and censored in some countries. Some even tried to ban the book because of its controversial content.

Despite this, it remains an influential and studied novel in the field of literature. I liked the reflection work. No author has succeeded in plunging us into the darkness of the soul of a paedophile character as him

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