A Generic Study On The Postwar British Campus Novels

According to genre theory, a genre is both relatively stable and comparatively transformational. So is the genre of the postwar British campus novel. In comparing the similarities and differences of the two generations of the postwar British campus novel, with Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis as the representative of the first generation and The History Man (1975) by Malcolm Bradbury and Small World (1985) by David Lodge as representatives of the second one, the present thesis aims to discover how the actual manipulations of certain generic conventions promote the development and prosperity of the postwar British campus novels by alluding to the theory of generic criticism.Though some researches about the postwar British campus novels have been undertaken, few of them have touched upon these novels from generic perspective so far, let alone studied them systematically and comprehensively. The efforts taken here are just attempts to reveal and discuss how the postwar British campus novel develops to its present form as far as genre is concerned.This thesis consists of six parts. The first one is an introduction which offers a brief review of genre theory and traces the development of British campus novels. Chapter One provides a review of the emergence of British campus novels by clarifying the distinction of their two stages. Under the guidance of family resemblance theory and the theory of transformation within a genre, the similarities and differences of the two generations of the postwar British campus novel are rendered in Chapter Two and Chapter Three. With this discussion, a dynamic nature of transformation from the first generation to the second one on the part of the postwar British campus novel is revealed. Chapter Four is an attempt to present the instability of the genre of the postwar British campus novel on the basis of its transformation and development. At the same time, it tries to dig into the dynamic nature of the genre by referring to the similarities, inner repetitions and differences of the postwar British campus novels from the perspectives of synchronicity and diachronicity. The combination of the two approaches will help bring about a more comprehensive view of the postwar British campus novel.The thesis concludes that the genre of the postwar British campus novel is characteristic of the development of a genre, and that the genre theory is effective in helping uncover the inner workings of a genre during the process of its development. What's more, the generic perspective in the study of the genre of the postwar British campus novel can better bring to light the inner relationships of the postwar British campus novels which foreshadows the future of this genre as a type of literature full of vitality and power.