Hemingway: the posthumous fiction and Nabokov’s Lolita: A cross-textual reading

Abstract

Some of Hemingway’s posthumous fiction engages in dynamic intertextual relations with Lolita. The study identifies some of these protean links but goes further, pointing out the structural and ethical differences between the two authors’ work, Nabokov’s being rooted in a logic of perversion, while Hemingway’s dramatizes what can be called perverse temptation combined with sublimation. The study, which is based on intertextuality but not limited to it, proves helpful for a better understanding of the tension generated between desire and non‑normative sexuality, thus engaging in a debate with the perversion‑oriented criticism that tends to situate Hemingway’s work in perverse clinical categories