![]() ![]() In so doing, Nabokov provides a clever way of introducing his text and also the theme of the untrustworthy narrator. In this prologue, Nabokov pretends that someone else has encountered the text and is now introducing it to the reader. He creates a fake foreword for his novel Lolita by an imaginary scholar named John Ray, Jr. Vladimir Nabokov loved to play with conventions in his very unconventional works of literature. “Lolita” should make all of us-parents, social workers, educators-apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world. As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac-these are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends they point out potent evils. ![]() Example #3Īs a case history, “Lolita” will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. ![]() This prologue, a poem in itself, sets the scene in a very straightforward manner telling the audience the setting, protagonists, theme, and even what will happen at the end. Perhaps the most famous of all literary prologues, William Shakespeare wrote a lovely sonnet to introduce the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. ( Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare) What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. The which if you with patient ears attend, Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,Īnd the continuance of their parents’ rage, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.įrom forth the fatal loins of these two foesĪ pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life ĭo with their death bury their parents’ strife. These people end up occupying different chapters in the rest of the text. In this prologue Chaucer introduces us to the theme of people going on pilgrimage, and introduces the various people he will be going on pilgrimage with. Geoffrey Chaucer included a very long “general prologue” to his famous work The Canterbury Tales. ( The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer) To distant shrines well known in sundry lands. (So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-Īnd palmers to go seeking out strange strands, That sleep through all the night with open eye Into the Ram one half his course has run, The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun Quickened again, in every holt and heath, When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath, The drought of March has pierced unto the rootĪnd bathed each vein with liquor that has power When April with his showers sweet with fruit Examples of Prologue in Literature Example #1 However, some writers caution away beginning novelists from including prologues because they do not often grip the reader as much as beginning in media res, i.e., in the middle of the action. We can find examples of prologues in many different novels, plays, and poems to this day. Plays in the Middle Ages and in Elizabethan England drew on this tradition of prologues, and often included a short introduction presented by a character or chorus. The prologue in these cases provided important, pertinent information that playgoers would need to understand and contextualize the main events of the drama. Prologue examples were prevalent in Ancient Greek theater, often explaining an episode which directly led into the main events of the play about to come. ![]()
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