Academic Adventures In The Uncertain World

David Lodge is one of the most preeminent novelist-critics in contemporary Britain. His campus novels have always been critics' persistent focus, especially his Campus Trilogy - namely Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses, Small World: An Academic Romance and Nice Work. They not only represent the peak of Lodge's literary creation, but also draw most critics' attention.Lodge's dual identity as both a novelist and critic enables him to write with full self-consciousness. Critics, at home or abroad, are usually firstly drawn by the unique style of literary texts and the diversity of his writing techniques. Others come to study the correlation between Lodge's creation and literary criticism, or interpret the trilogy by use of the contemporary mainstream theories, such as structuralism, poststructuralism, cultural study and so on.This thesis focuses on the idea of "adventure" that has permeated throughout the trilogy and studies its thematic significance. Situated in the uncertain atmosphere in the aftermath of the two world wars, Lodge's trilogy runs an undercurrent of western academics' self-exploration from their initial perplexity to their subsequent adaptation. Chapter One provides a brief introduction to David Lodge's academic achievement, both as a critic and novelist, and critics' interpretations of Lodge's Campus Trilogy. Chapter Two offers a comprehensive study of the adventures carried out by the fictional academics both inside and outside the academy, showing that academics' life has taken tremendous changes. Chapter Three continues to explore that, because of those academics' frequent adventures and fresh experiences, the interplay between the academic world and non-academic world becomes more self-evident and profound. As the key part of the thesis, Chapter Four tries to present, in the order of the trilogy, the hard yet persistent self-exploration of modern academics in the changing yet perplexing society of the contemporary West.