There is nowadays the new criticism and the old, and among the practitioners of both methodologies there are good and bad critics. Laurie Clancy makes no attempt or claim to ‘re-read’ (shorthand for applying various post-structural approaches to canonical works) Nabokov’s oeuvre and hence falls four-square (puns arc de rigueur when dealing with Nabokov) amongst the Bayleys rather than the Eagletons. While this position must inevitably indicate where Clancy stands in the wider debate, there may also be historical reasons for this stance in relation to a writer like Nabokov, whose work has received comparatively little attention despite – or perhaps because of– his globally provocative reputation.