Review:
Shakespeare and Nabokov are literary giants in their respective cultural traditions. In his spectacular Nabokov's Shakespeare, Samuel Schuman presents a remarkable face-off and solves several of the remaining riddles about the writers' literary enigmas. --Yuri Leving, Professor of Russian Literature, Dalhousie University, Canada, and Editor of the Nabokov Online Journal.
Samuel Schuman has provided a fine-grained analysis of Shakespearean motifs and allusions in Nabokovs work. His careful interpretation of Shakespearean references offers fresh illumination on such major works as Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada. --Julian W. Connolly, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia, USA
Samuel Schuman is one of the most trustworthy, measured, and responsible Nabokov critics whose scholarly credibility in both Shakespearean and Nabokovian circles makes him singularly suited to account for Nabokovs insistent and purposive use of Shakespeares works in the texture and structure of his own. And Schumans project is a very timely one: all previous work on Nabokov and Shakespeare has been done mainly through a handful of essays, all of which are well done but deliver only glancing blows to the topic. The great strength of this book is the comprehensive treatment of Shakespeares presence in Nabokovs work, and Nabokovs Shakespeare would be worth buying just for Schumans wide-ranging and convincing explication of the long Shakespearean discussion and the Krug/Hamlet parallels in Bend Sinister. The books other strengths are Schumans conscientious scholarship, clear principles of organization and argument, and the writings stout resistance of academic hyperbole and unproductive theoretical complexity.""
Zoran Kuzmanovich, Professor of English, Davidson University, USA, and editor of Nabokov Studies
""Nabokovs Shakespeare provides readers with a very fantastical banquet, as Benedick puts it in Much Ado about Nothing. This exciting, accessible, wide-ranging volume sparkles with the glint of literary discovery as it traces the many ways in which one great writer can read another. Samuel Schuman confidently explores the infinite variety of Nabokovs evocations, citations, homages, parodies, and translations of Shakespeare, across the entire range of his Russian and especially his English works. After reading Nabokovs Shakespeare, you will better appreciate
""English literatures two most brilliant wordsmiths. And you will indeed know Nabokovs Shakespeareincluding the themes of loss, banishment, and arts transcendent magic that he shared with his predecessor, the particular scenes from the plays that he staged and restaged in his own works, and even his favorite line in all of Shakespeares writing. Schumans book offers endless riches to Nabokov scholars, and to anyone who simply loves literature.
--Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Associate Professor of English, College of the Holy Cross, co-editor of the Vladimir Nabokov Electronic Forum (NABOKV-L), and past president of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society
About the Author:
Samuel Schuman served as the Garrey Carruthers Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of New Mexico, and Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Minnesota, Morris and the University of North Carolina, Asheville, USA. He is past President of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and author of Vladimir Nabokov: A Reference Guide. He has published extensively on Nabokov as well as on British Renaissance Drama.
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