Between Theory And Practice-On The Consistency And Discrepancy Between David Lodge's Literary Theory And His Creative Writings

David Lodge is one of the preeminent British novelist-critics. The present thesis analyses both Lodge's literary theory and his own creative writings, pointing out their consistencies and discrepancies. Chapter One comments and analyses Lodge's literary theory systematically. His literary theory experiences three phases. The first phase witnesses the publication of Language of Fiction, which is based on New Criticism, expounds and proves that the art of the novel is also an art of language and the novel can also be analysed in terms of detail, image or repetition; it therefore introduces New Criticism into the analysis of fiction and establishes fiction as an art of language. In the 1960s and 1970s, under the influence of structuralism, Lodge interprets the artistic distinctions of realistic fiction which is different from poetry and drama from an aesthetic angle in application of Jakobson's theory of metonymy and metaphor, and, by incorporating the theory of defamiliarization, he puts forward the well-known "pendulum" theory, namely, the British fiction in the last hundred years oscillates between antimodernist and modernist poles repeatedly. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lodge studies Bakhtin's dialogism. After Bakhtin maintains that dialogic is the inherent nature of the novel and the novel is a medley of styles. Chapter Two summarizes Lodge's creative writings. His early realistic novels have embodied his basic features of creative writings: binary structure and dialogic. Foregrounding form and techniques, his novels during his mature years are experimental. Lodge returns to traditional realistic writing after he retired from Birmingham University as thematics is foregrounded and techniques are backgrounded in the novels of that phase. Chapter Three analyses the consistencies between Lodge's literary theory and creative writings in terms of language of fiction, binary oppositions, dialogic and camivalesque through analysing his specific novels. Meanwhile, the chapter analyses the discrepancies between Lodge's literary theory and creative writings and explores the causes of these discrepancies. Lodge the writer is an heir of realist tradition which emphasizescontent, ethics and thematics; while Lodge the critic is interested in formalist criticism which gives priority to form, technique and aesthetics. Thus, the conflict between content and form, between ethics and aesthetics is apparent in Lodge's creative writings. Lodge's dilemma results from three factors: l)the widening gap between literary theory and creative writing; 2)Lodge's Catholic background prevents him from accepting ideological criticism; and 3) the postmodern context where the nature of language is such that any discourse, including a literary text or a literary criticism, can be shown under analysis to be full of gaps and contradictions which undermine its claim to have a determinate meaning.