The Relationships in Novels from the Perspective of Literary Ethics—Taking the Film Lolita as an Example

Abstract

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov is an outstanding and productive Russian-Amercian writer. As the epitome work of the writer, Lolita must be the most controversial novel without doubt. This novel has been adapted into two versions of films: 1962 version and 1997 version. This paper will analyze the 1997 version of Lolita directed by Adrian Lyne. Most critics have mainly conducted the analysis of the film form the perspective of ethnics, postmodernism, narrative strategy, time as well as the image of death. However, there are few, if any, researches done from the perspective of literary ethics to dig into the relationships in the film. With the integration of ethics methods and literary research methods, literary ethics serves as a major new criticism approach and is mainly employed to conduct the analysis of literature. With the ethical factors unveiled in Lolita, this paper seeks to analyze three relationships: human beings and society, human beings and self, ethics and truth. The paper interprets the film Lolita from the perspective of literary ethics, explores the relationships in the film, exploits Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov’ s pursuit of truth, kindness and beauty, and also hopes to provide a new direction for later research on the film Lolita.