Academia in the fictional world of David Lodge

Abstract

David Lodge has fascinated the readers of contemporary times with his intelligent, entertaining yet irascible manner of narrating stories of the world of academia, though known more famously across the globe as a literary critic of formidable erudition and breadth of insight who opened to the readers multiple perspectives of reading and understanding fiction since the last decades of the twentieth century. Universities and colleges are the fictional canvas upon which Lodge wields his writerly charm in astutely examining academia and its concomitant ethics, merits and practices in a comic and parodic mode. His effortless depiction takes the genre of the campus novel to greater heights much ahead of the earlier practitioners. On the pages of his novels the various facets of modern academic life ranging from teacher-taught relationships, departmental politics, academic conferences and symposiums to erotic indulgences of the academicians come alive in vibrant spectacles. The dissertation explores the subject in six chapters. newlineChapter 1, Introduction, in exploring both the critical and creative facets of David Lodge finds how conspicuously his fictional ouevre is informed by the zeitgeist of golden years of post-war British higher education (from 1950s to 1970s), recognized for the unprecedented expansion of universities and colleges. The campus novel genre has thrived simultaneously in England and America; it can be considered an exclusively Anglo-American phenomenon. newline