Frontiers in Art Research, 2022, 4(14); doi: 10.25236/FAR.2022.041413.
Liu Ting
College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China
In Nabokov’s novel Lolita, words such as nymphet, nymphancy, nympholepsy and nymphic appear more than hundred times. They are all derive from the alluring, entrancing and bewitching deities in Ancient Greek: nymphs. In this novel, Lolita is often being described as nymphet by Humbert, but in American society at that time, she is just a typically modern American girl with beauty and energy, while not the nymphet in Humbert’s own mind. That’s to say, the image of the nymphet is actually the desire of Humbert himself toward other young girls. The desire, which intentionally covered by his twice marriages with Valeria and Charlotte, appears after his loss of his lover, Annabel, in childhood. Humbert tries to materialize his image of a nymphet to the real girl Lolita, and hopes to control her, but he failed, it is actually the freaky desire of a nymphet which finally destroyed him.
nymphet, desire, Lolita
Liu Ting. Tragedy of Nymphic Desire in Lolita. Frontiers in Art Research (2022) Vol. 4, Issue 14: 67-71. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2022.041413.
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