Mode Of Characterization In Postwar British Academic Novels

This thesis tries to analyze how the Romantic and Realistic modes of characterization are constructed in the three representative postwar British academic novels --- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, Eating People Is Wrong by Malcolm Bradbury, and Small World by David Lodge --- from the perspective of Northrop Frye's theory of character. It means to reveal the transformation of these modes and trace their innate development.Though great changes have taken place in characterization on the part of the novel since its birth, it is Northrop Frye who distinguishes two types of character --- Romantic and Realistic. His theory of character sheds much light on the analysis of the modes of characterization in the postwar British academic novels.This thesis contains five chapters besides introduction and conclusion. Chapter One expounds Northrop Frye's theory of character. In his"Theory of Modes", the first essay of his Anatomy of Criticism, Frye comes up with the idea that preference for certain types of characterization swings back and forth like a pendulum among different writers. Frye alludes to Realistic and Romantic as the two poles of a descriptive spectrum. Romantic character refers to one so overblown and so clichéd that the reader ceases to believe in his truthfulness. Yet when the pendulum swings the alternative way, the character becomes Realistic, with a common person leading a life well close to the reader's own life experiences.Chapter Two mainly lays bare how postwar British academic novels came to be and the generic features shared by them as far as characterization is concerned. With the interval of 1960s, academic novelists are found to be in two generations: Kingsley Amis in 1950s as one, and Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge in 1970s and 1980s as the other. Under the influence of the Angry Young Men, Amis expresses his resentment against the bourgeoisie in both social privilege and cultural snobbery with the characters he created. Characters in Amis's novels who conform to the main stream of social conditions are the target of his criticism. Bradbury satirizes the corruption and degeneration in humanitarianism. His characters are objects of satire for their defense of morality. David Lodge is more critical of social manners. He reveals moral decay in the modern society with a much milder ridiculous tone.Chapter Three analyzes the mode of characterization in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim. By referring to ordinary social life, Amis characterizes Jim Dixon, a common teaching assistant who comes from lower social class and lacks lofty ideals shared by traditional heroes in powerful and unconstrained style. He is preoccupied with how to make a better living with means of every conceivable kind. Jim's success in reaching the top of society by hypergamy, gaining money and social privilege, proves him a Realistic character in spite of some romantic color out of his love experience.Chapter Four makes a study of the mode of characterization in Malcolm Bradbury's Eating People Is Wrong. As a work of the second generation of postwar British academic novelists, Bradbury's first novel Eating People Is Wrong which was published in 1959 contains characters with more Romantic color in spite of the influence of the realistic writing style of 1950s. To Professor Treece, who cares more about what is wrong with the social life and so is nicknamed"the Moral Father", decency and good will are commanding principles for social behaviors. However, with the degeneration of traditional moral values in the postwar years, people like Treece can only remain a spectator. Treece is a miserable Romantic idealist.Chapter Five takes the characters in David Lodge's Small World into discussion. With the adoption of binary structure in characterization, Lodge displays Romantic characterization represented by that of the young scholar Persse who is in his crazy pursuit of a beautiful girl, in parallel with Realistic rendering of other scholars represented by Professor Zapp and Swallow who chase after either fame and gains or extra-marital relations or both. The co-existence of Romantic and Realistic characters is typified in Small World.The thesis concludes that, with the discovery of either Romantic or Realistic mode of characterization or both, the postwar British academic novel as a genre is found in full development with internal shifts of characterization from Realistic and Romantic as dominant types respectively to the co-existence of both types. This gives evidence to the great vitality of this specific type of the novel.