''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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meaningful picture - but meaning what, what? " (269)
The most obvious parodistic violation of old literary
practices is the happy ending of Ada, which, at
least for the reader who is rooted in convention, is
quite the wrong thing, because, after all, Ada's and
Van's is an incestuous relationship and should lead
to guilt and punishment instead. The parodistic intention
is emphasized by the many allusions to
Chateaubriand, whose story of Rene and Amelie serves
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as an ironic foil. Ladore, Bryant's Castle, the
St. Malo fishersong that Lucette sings, can all be
traced back to Chateaubriand. Ada reads "a'story by
Chateaubriand about a pair of romantic siblings" (133)
and sometimes calls Van "cher, trop cher Rene" (131).
The mirroring becomes quite elaborate with Mlle
Lariviere's screenplay, based on a novel of hers,
"about mysterious children doing strange things in
old parks" (249). The novel's title is Les Enfants
Maudits, its hero is called Rene (198), its setting
is Bryant's chateau (205), and in the film version of
it Marina is to play the children's mother.
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Appel points out another complex allusion fitting
into the pattern of incest, in which Byron and
Chateaubriand are cleverly linked. Byron is brought
in because of his incestuous relationship with his
half-sister Augusta. His daughter's name`was Augusta
Ada, and she is simply called "Ada" in Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage.
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Also, Chateaubriand claims in Memoirs
d'outre-tombe that "Rene was conceived under the same
elm in Middlesex, England, where Byron s'abandonnait