Structuration And Deconstruction: A Paradoxical Dialogue

Ever since he made an attempt to distinguish the language of realistic fiction from everyday language and posited the literariness of the former, David Lodge sets his feet on the track of formalism and realism and makes them benefit each other in his critical and writing practice. When 1970s was found to be the decade of deconstructionism, Lodge was just in his prime of literary creations including the trilogy of campus novels. Though Lodge does not seem to think highly of this new critical trend, deconstruction identifies itself as a conflicting opposite to structuration in Lodge's construction of his campus novels. Lodge renders deconstructive forces in the temporal development of plot, the establishment of unity and the meticulous structures in these works. Thereby, his novels are found to be in a two-way interaction that is actualized by the opposition between realism and experimentalism. As is analysed in this thesis, structuration and deconstruction are actually in paradoxical dialogue that is attained through orientations in one way or another shared by realistic writing mode and experimental devices. It is through the opposition between structuration and deconstruction that Lodge presents the kind of sceptical and contradictory mentality characteristic of the postmodern society. The conflict between realistic writing and experimentalism turns out to strengthen the power of representing reality and human experience. Lodge's practice in the three campus novels also turns out to be a formalist demonstration of realistic fiction in postmodern context. With this practice, Lodge updates both realistic fiction and campus novel as a genre. This thesis is composed of five parts. Part One is an introduction about the development of Lodge's structuralist studies that contribute to the structuralist layout of his literary texts. Derrida and his deconstructionism are also introduced for the analysis of Lodge's deconstructive demonstration. After a brief introduction of campus novel as a genre is made and a general literature review is given, the argument of this thesis is rendered for subsequent analysis. The motif of quest in Lodge's campus novels that falls within the domain of formalist thematic studies is analyzed in Part Two of the thesis. The nature of desire in the motif of quest is illuminated by Schopenhauer's philosophy of will. Arranged in binary structures in the three campus novels, the motif of quest finds it developed in realistic writing that encounters subversion from disruption of development, the fruitlessness of pursuit and the breach of logic etc. Yet with realistic orientation, those unconventional devices reconcile the conventional construction of plot to serve the presentation of the genuine state of contemporary society. Part Three takes Joseph Frank's theory of spatial-form novel as theoretical foundation and attempts to give an analysis of how spatiality breaks off the unity of temporality to make a new one. The process of attaining spatiality is just how realistic writing confronts experimentalism and finally gets reconciled with it. In Part Four, an analysis is made of intertextuality in Lodge's campus novels. Being both structuralist and post-structuralist in nature, intertextuality makes a good example of how structuration and deconstruction are reconciled in one text as the origination of intertextuality in Bakhtin's dialogic theory would justify. This thesis comes to an end in Chapter Five with the conclusion that Lodge's campus novels should not be regarded as simply postmodernist. They are more updated realistic fictions in the postmodern times. His novels enrich the postmodernist realistic discourse because it proves that realism and experimentalism can communicate in a paradoxical dialogue instead of being exclusive opposites. Experimentalism in modernist and postmodernist devices helps promote the significance of realistic writing rather than deconstruct it.