Norman Fairclough’s Textually Oriented Discourse Analysis in Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire

Abstract

Pale Fire (1962), is a postmodern novel presented as a 999-line poem titled “Pale Fire”, written by John Shade. Shade’s poem describes many aspects of his life. Canto 1 includes his early encounters with death. Canto 2 is about his family and the apparent suicide of his daughter. Canto 3 focuses on Shade’s search for knowledge about an afterlife. Canto 4 offers details on Shade’s daily life.

In Kinbote’s editorial contributions, he tells three stories intermixed with each other. One is his own story including what he thinks of as his friendship with Shade. Kinbote’s second story deals with King Charles II, the deposed king of Zembla. Kinbote’s third story is that of Gradus, a murderer forwarded by the new rulers of Zembla to kill the exiled King Charles. In the last note, to the missing line 1000, Kinbote narrates how Gradus killed Shade by mistake.