Jiayi Kang

The Matter of Chance is a story in a collection of short stories by Nabokov about Luzhin and his wife Elena who seek each other but miss them each other. This paper analyzes the tragic fate of the main characters as exiles in this story by applying Iser’s theory of “blank” and Jauss’s theory of “horizon of expectation” in Reader-Response Criticism. Through the interaction between the author, the text and the reader, the reader’s reading interest is stimulated, and the reader is better involved in the text. Of course, the reader’s experience also influences the reader. And the reader’s horizon of expectation changes and adjusts along with the reader’s reading activities, so that the reader’s view of the novel will be reshaped. Based on this, the paper focuses on the loneliness and brokenness of the post-war exiles and shows Nabokov’s sense of homelessness as an exile.

The Matter of Chance; Reader-Response Criticism; blank; horizon of expectations; tragic fate

[1] Zhu Gang.Twentieth-Century Western Literary Theories.Beijing:Peking University Press,2006.Print. [2] Huang Wenxiu.“How to Interpret the Loneliness Theme in The Ballad of the Sad Café from a Reader-Response Criticism Perspective.”2016.Jiangxi Normal University,MA thesis [3] Vladimir Nabokov.The Stories of Nabokov.New York:Random,1990.Print. [4] Zhao Yao.“The World-Historical Significance of the October Revolution.”Scientific Socialism 06(2009):28-31. [5] Guo Yu.“A New Historicist Interpretation of The Matter of Chance.”Jingu Creative Literature 42(2023):16-18.

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