I would like to let the List know about a book that I just received and though "Nabakov" only appears once in the index, I am hoping that it may have some relevance to understanding the structure of Pale Fire.
"Thinking in Circles, An Essay on Ring Composition" by Mary Douglas (Yale University Press, 2006) retains the pleasures of the lecture of which it appears to be an extension. Dr Douglas (social anthropology) believes that many texts (mostly, but not exclusively from antiquity) have been misunderstood because we no longer connect with the literary form in which they were written. Her major analyses deal with The Illiad, The Book of Numbers, and Tristram Shandy.
Roman Jakobson seems to have been an important source in her thinking.
Carolyn