Theoretical Fictions Of David Lodge--The Study Of Lodge's Trilogy

The trilogy-Changing Places, Small World, Nice Work-by the British contemporary academic writer David Lodge is not only a work that enjoys a big audience, but the writer's laboratory for literary study and criticism since in it Lodge exerts his knowledge of literary theories to the extreme and makes it "theoretical fiction" in Mark Currie's words.The trilogy is light and humorous in general but at the same time serious and thought-provoking. In it Lodge applies various forms and techniques borrowed from different literary schools, which contributes to the name of "theoretical fiction", and integrates styles of different writers as well as elements of both the highbrow culture and the lowbrow culture. In so doing, he challenges the literary canon and the existence of the gap between the highbrow and the lowbrow, which he believes as constructed and visionary and thus is to be crossed or closed. This corresponds with postmodernists' slogan of "crossing the border, closing the gap" and is actually an echo of cultural studies, which places great emphasis on popular culture and life of the ordinary people.Furthermore, Lodge puts forward while experimenting with various literary techniques in the text a provoking question: have we been going too far in literary experiment to preserve "something vital" in the great tradition of literature? Lodge gives an answer to this question in the text with his own practice in novel-writing, especially his faith in realism and the return to Victorian style in Nice Work: concealed behind the flaunting techniques hi the text is a suggestion for the experimentalists: stop there and try to preserve the vital things hi literary tradition.The thesis is divided according to the natural division of the trilogy into three parts. Each part focuses on different aspects which show how the novel is theoretical and how Lodge raises the above-mentioned questions and gives his answers.