Author(s)

Tingting Zhang

Corresponding Author

Tingting Zhang

Abstract

Vladimir Nabokov, the prestigious Russian-born American writer, whose works not only represents the twentieth century Russian expatriate literature, but also is on behalf of the American contemporary literature, has established his indispensable status in literature after publishing his masterpiece. Lolita, the most famous representative work of Nabokov, has been attracting the attention and interest of the critics and readers all over the world. Because of its hero’s abnormal immoral love affair with a 12-year-old teenage by the name of Lolita, Lolita has been regarding as one of the best-known and also the most controversial novels of the 20th century. Ever since its publication, Lolita has aroused a lot of attention at home and abroad and has gone ups and downs as a classic. However, it has attained its unique status in literary circles. Even up to now, Lolita has been interpreted and re-interpreted by a great number of critics from various angles, such as post-modernism, theme, feminism, aesthetic value, image, linguistic and structural features and so on. In contrast,from the perspective of literary ethical criticism, through the detailed analysis of the enchanted hunter Humbert, the writer of the paper is able to reveal that although their respective tragedy results from violating the ethic order and disregarding their ethical relationship of being father and stepdaughter, yet it should not give us the ground to announce that the enchanted hunter doesn’t have the true love and it is completely immoral of him to even love Lolita, because everyone is equal before love and he/she is qualified to take the challenge or even risk to pursue his/her love.

Keywords

The enchanted hunter, Humbert, ethical consciousness, true love, immorality