Metamodern art and music in Nabokov’s works
St Petersburg University Representative office in Spain invites you to an online lecture on "Metamodern art and music in Nabokov’s works". The lecture will be given by Nina Shcherbak, a candidate in philology.
In the world of literary art, Vladimir Nabokov occupies a unique place — his works hover on the edge of modernism and postmodernism, but many contemporary researchers find features in his texts that transcend these categories.
Metamodernism is a term that refers to the state of culture post-1990s. A reaction to postmodernism, which is characterised by deconstruction, post-trauma and semantic ruptures, metamodernism is dominated by ethical and psychological components. It is associated with the search for one’s "self", the search for answers to questions about the nature of existence, and the reflection on where humanity is heading after the cultural and spiritual shocks of postmodernism.
Nabokov’s work cannot be unequivocally ascribed to metamodernism. However, the writer’s works are so multidimensional, and his prose so meticulously constructed, that in many ways they anticipate the present. The mirroring, multidimensionality and multidirectionality of Nabokov’s prose allow his books to be studied as musical compositions. "The Luzhin Defence", "Mary", "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight", "Pale Fire" — each of the writer’s novels contains both purely romantic touches and ultra-modern ways of constructing meaning.
In our lecture we will discuss the philosophy of metamodernism and its fundamentally new concepts. We will also talk about Nabokov’s works, the themes and stylistic devices in his works that anticipate a metamodernist view of the world, and how Nabokov balances between duality and unity.
Lecturer
Nina Shcherbak is an Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, Master of Arts (UK), author and screenwriter. She is also a scriptwriter for science television programmes and the author of fifteen monographs and books on linguistics, literature, philosophy of language and English literature.
The lecture will be held at the Cultural Foundation in Russian with simultaneous translation into Spanish, as part of the celebration of the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University — the oldest university in Russia.