Playing with the Other: The Stories of Mu Xin and Vladimir Nabokov
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis studies the play of the Other in Vladimir Nabokov’s short story collection The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov and Mu Xin’s short story collection An Empty Room. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory on the genealogy of morality provides a framework for the research. This thesis explores the two writer’s representation of the other time, the other space, and the self as another, and extends the analysis in the thematic contexts of exile and memory. Examining how Nabokov and Mu Xin cope with “differences” arising in human existence, this thesis argues that such differences are fundamental to their artistic creation. By accommodating the Other in their fictional writing, Nabokov and Mu Xin free the self from temporal, spatial and cultural constraints.
abstract: This thesis studies the play of the Other in Vladimir Nabokov’s short story collection The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov and Mu Xin’s short story collection An Empty Room. Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory on the genealogy of morality provides a framework for the research. This thesis explores the two writer’s representation of the other time, the other space, and the self as another, and extends the analysis in the thematic contexts of exile and memory. Examining how Nabokov and Mu Xin cope with “differences” arising in human existence, this thesis argues that such differences are fundamental to their artistic creation. By accommodating the Other in their fictional writing, Nabokov and Mu Xin free the self from temporal, spatial and cultural constraints.
author: Wu, Meng
language: en_ca
keywords: Mu Xin, Vladimir Nabokov, the Other, short fiction, On the Genealogy of Morality, An Empty Room, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
date published: 2012-08-20
date modified: 2026-07-27T21:56:05Z
provider: Western University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Western Ontario

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/30320