Academia at a critical point: David Lodge’s Small World

Wojciech Nowicki

doi:10.56583/fs.287

Published : 2010-12-31

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2010)

Academia at a critical point: David Lodge’s Small World

Wojciech Nowicki

DOI: https://doi.org/10.56583/fs.287

Abstract

The article discusses Small World, one of the most popular campus novels by the contemporary author David Lodge. What distinguishes Small World is the theme of academia: nearly all major characters are lecturers in literature. Lodge involves the reader in an intertextual game whose meanings are available only to experts, i.e. lecturers themselves, since most readers may overlook the fact that the novel is a satirical remake of Arthurian romance. The “critical point” mentioned in the title of the article alludes to critical debates in the novel, to a critique of the academic institution as such and indicates Small World as the climax of the genre.

Keywords:

campus novel, intertextuality, romance, criticism

Details

References

Statistics

Authors

Download files

PDF

Citation rules

Nowicki, W. (2010). Academia at a critical point: David Lodge’s Small World. Facta Simonidis, 3(1), 191–204. https://doi.org/10.56583/fs.287

Altmetric indicators

Cited by / Share

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

References

Acheson J., The British and Irish novel since 1960, New York 1991. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21522-5

Bradbury M., Rates of exchange, London 1984 [1983].

Burton R.S., Standoff at the crossroads: when town meets gown in David Lodge’s nice work, “Critique Studies in Contemporary Fiction”, 35(1994), no. 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00111619.1994.9934706

Lodge D., Changing places: a tale of two campuses, London 1978 [1975].

Lodge D., Small world: an academic romance, London 1985 [1984].

Lodge D., The British Museum is falling down, “An Afterword”, Harmondsworth 1983.

Lodge D., Working with structuralism, London-New York 1991 [1981].

Proctor M.R., The English university novel, Berkeley-Los Angeles 1957.

The Pleasure of the text, trans. R. Miller, London 1976.

“The Professoriat in Love: David Lodge’s Academic Trilogy and the Ethics of Romance”, in: Postwar academic fiction: satire, ethics, community, ed. K. Womack, London 2002.