SOURCE: “Nabokov and the Medieval Hunt Allegory,” in Revue De Littérature Comparée, Vol. LX, No. 3, July-September, 1986, pp. 321-27.

In the following essay, Morgan argues that there is “a series of deliberate analogies between” Nabokov's The Real Life of Sebastian Knight and the French courtly stag-hunt poetry of the thirteenth century.

Vladimir Nabokov's allusive use of literary conventions has been long remarked upon; his novels teem with ironic references to nineteenth and twentieth century models. This aspect of his work has been perhaps too much stressed by critics wishing to demonstrate how Nabokov has re-vitalised the novel by re-working its traditional elements (and eager to demonstrate their cleverness at spotting allusions). Novels in which covert references are inlaid into the text have been presented as little more than a joker's anthology of literary fragments: a “highbrow” version of “Find What the Sailor Had Hidden”. The allusion is...