Epistolary Mechanism and Unreliable Narrator in Novel by V. V. Nabokov “Once in Aleppo…”

Abstract

The cases of V. V. Nabokov’s appeal to the epistolary mechanism are considered. It turns out that the epistolary genre, as well as V. V. Nabokov’s metanarrative reflection create a dual context around the narrator, who mixes with the character. In particular, the prospect of interpreting the epistolary text is assessed, taking into account the concept of an unreliable narrator on the example of V. V. Nabokov’s 1943 short story. It is suggested that a participant in literary correspondence can be classified as an unreliable narrator, especially if his narration fluctuates between an inadequate assessment of reality and illusion. It is noted that imaginary events, which are evidence of madness, speak of the stress that the narrator invented by V. V. Nabokov is experiencing during the Second World War and the moment of flight from France from the Nazi Wehrmacht. It is emphasized that the demonstrative narrative complexity makes the aesthetic experience richer and more diverse when reading an already structurally complex postmodern text. It is pointed out that the epistolary examples from the corpus of V. V. Nabokov’s prose are placed in the general context of the development of the literary letters genre in the first half of the 20th century.