L

Lacour, Mme.: [Lolita] A woman murdered by a lover in Alres, southern France, while her husband watched. The assailant was saved from capture by a bomb blast in an adjacent building which caused a commotion large enough to allow the murderer to escape.

Lake Climax: [Lolita] The large and "populous" lake near Camp Q out of which Charlie would fish contraceptives for his trysts with Barbara Burke, Phyllis Chatfield, and Dolores each morning. It is supposedly named for a booming industrial town nearby.

Lambert Lambert: [Lolita] one of several pseudonyms Humbert thinks about for his Confessions of a White Widowed Male before chosing Humbert Humbert. See also Mesmer Mesmer and Otto Otto.

Laodicean: [Lolita] In this context, it means indifferent or lukewarm, usually as it pertains to religion, although here "non-Laodicean" describes the tendency for showers to be either hot or cold.

Lasalle, Frank: [Lolita] A fifty-year-old mechanic accused of molesting eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948.

Laura: [Lolita] Petrarch's lost love.

Leigh, Annabel: [Lolita] A girl of English and Dutch ancestry whose name refers to Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee." She and Humbert had met at the beach one summer in their early adolescence, and it was their thwarted attempts at making love which perhaps Humbert was trying to fulfill with his lust for nymphets.

Leigh, Mr. and Mrs.: [Lolita] Annabel's parents.

Lepchas: [Lolita] A Mongoloid people of India with a rather flexible view of intergenerational copulation.

Lepingville: [Lolita] A town near where Charlotte Haze is supposedly hospitalized for abominable abdominal pains. Also a town where a great poet resided in the early nineteenth century and where Humbert tells Lolita they will take in all the shows. In fact, it is in a gas station near there that he reveals her mother is dead, and proceeds to placate her with gifts he buys in the town.

Lester, Miss: [Lolita] A 'tweedy and short-haired' neighbor of Humbert's on Thayer St. in Beardsley, and a professor of English at Beardsley College.

Lilith: [Lolita] In Jewish legends, Adam's wife before Eve.

"Little Carmen": [Lolita] Lolita's favorite record; Humbert calls it "Dwarf Conductors."

"The Little Nymph": [Lolita] (1940) Clare Quilty's most successful play; it traveled 14,000 miles and was played 280 times.

Litam, Ned: [Lolita] The man in California who taught Lolita a tennis volley which Humbert likes to watch.

Lolita (character): [Lolita] Also, Lo, Lola, Dolly, and Dolores Haze; She is the central object of Humbert's lust, love, admiration, and obsession. Shortly after first seeing her on the piazza, Humbert makes her his solipsist ideal; she becomes his archetypal nymphet and eclipses the influence and memory of the past 25 years of his life.

Lorrain, Claude: [Lolita] Claude Lorrain is often said to be the father of the European tradition of landscape painting. Born in France in 1600, Lorrain is usually considered an Italian painter, as he lived in that country for most of his life. Known also as a master of painting the beauty and variety of natural light, Lorrain exercised an influence on the the landscape painters of the 19th century as well as the French impressionists. He died in Rome in 1682 at the age of 82.

Lourdes, Grotto of: [Lolita] The town of Lourdes is located in southwestern France. In 1858, fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous (now a saint) was said to have numerous religious visions at a grotto located there. In 1876 a basilica was built at the Grotto of Lourdes, which has become a popular tourist destination, in part from the miraculous healing power which is said to originate from the spot of Bernadette's visions. An underground church was completed near the shrine in 1958. The whereabouts of a replica in Louisiana is unknown.

Lyon: [Lolita] A city in France. Humbert attends high school there.

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