Under the Volcano is an incredible work of art. It is also quite daunting. It freely references lots and lots of other literary works, some well known, others quite obscure. If you haven’t read the entire body of literature written since Homer, you will miss references.
This study guide is designed to point out some of the obscure references and what they tie into. It wouldn’t really matter if Lowry was just showing off (which you sometimes get the feeling that Nabakov is doing) – most of the references he includes add real shades of meaning to the text around it.
This material is partially derived from Introduction and notes to Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, by Arnt Lykke Jakobsen, Department of English, University of Copenhagen.