NABOKOV'S ENCHANTED HUNTERS IN LOLITA AND HOMER'S AND JOYCE'S PALACE OF CIRCE. POLYGENETIC PARALLELS AND THE TRANSFIGURATIVE TOPOI OF MUTATION, PIG/HOG AND DOG

In Nabokov's texts among polygenetic motifs hidden mythological allusions play an important role. The less poetic attribute of Demeter, the image of the pig, is an ambivalent and archetypical complex code of fertility and dirt, divine and devilish. The pig-motif in Greek mythology is closely attached also to Circe, whose story (Odyssey, Song 10) has a system of references in Nabokov's Lolita, in "The Enchanted Hunters" chapter. These parallels raise the question of a further inter-textual cluster, Joyce's Ulysses (Ch. 15), as biographical data prove that Lolita was commenced the same months when Nabokov launched his lectures on Joyce at Cornell. This coincidence gives a firm base to investigate the common poetic strategies in Lolita and Ulysses, among them - the textual metamorphoses and the development and function of the pig, dog and nymph images.