from Carolyn to the List
Dear Arthur Glass,
I have never associated Lolita with "The Turn of the Screw", but since you have brought it up, I would like to try out an idea about that famous tale with the List.
I haven't found any of the explications of the story convincing, so came up with the idea that perhaps the governess was being punished (by God? by Henry James?) for the sin of having the audacity to attempt to be a virgin mother.
Be that as it may or may not - - to return to VN, there is a chapter devoted to this story in Marina Grishakova's book, The Models of Space, Time and Vision in V. Nabokov¹s Fiction Narrative Strategies and Cultural Frames. Unfortunately I am unable to locate my copy of the book, but it probably addresses your query.
Carolyn
p.s. I fail to understand the brouhaha over the rather simple, and beautiful to my eye and ear, line of the false azure in the window pane. Isn't this a rather simple metonymy? with the added heraldic sense that is certainly appropriate to Pale Fire?