Cinematic Narrative Features In David Lodge’s Nice Work

Nice work (1988) is the third novel of “campus trilogy” written by British contemporarywriter-critic David Lodge (1935-). By describing the dramatic relationship between themiddle-aged industrialist Vic Wilcox and the feminist and post-structuralist Dr Robyn Penrose,it represents the collision and final integration of two different cultures and value systems. Forits interesting plot and academic research value, when published in1988, it quickly becamethat year’s bestseller, won the1988Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, and wasshortlisted for the Booker Prize.In the late1970s the English novel entered a stage of the concourse of the two streams ofrealism and experimentalism. As one of the title of Lodge’s critical work—The Novelist at theCrossroads, Lodge himself was also standing at the crossroad of various schools of creation,and his “campus trilogy” just came into being in such context of cultural pluralism. Nice Workboth inherited the great tradition of the English novel and absorbed some technicalinnovations of experimentalism. About its experimental features, critics often focus on suchaspects as parody, collage, polyphony, intertextuality, and meta-fiction, but seemingly ignoreits distinctive cinematic narrative features. As the art of film became the most influential artform in20thcentury and has greatly influenced the creation of novelists, this thesis tries toanalyse the cinematic visualization, cinematic aural elements, and cinematic montage editingfeatures in this novel, and illustrates that such narrative techniques endow Nice Work a specialflavor, thus providing a relatively new angle to appreciate this interesting novel.This thesis consists of five parts.Introduction includes a brief study on David Lodge and his works, an overview ofrelationship between literature and film narrative techniques, as well as literature reviews and the significance of this thesis. By transplanting cinematic spatial narration, synchronicnarration, and montage techniques, the novel gives its readers a strong immersed sense and aspecial reading experience.Chapter One interprets the cinematic visualization in Nice Work, which includes thedynamic movement of literary cinematic camera-eye, and the dexterous shifting betweenobjective and subjective viewpoint. As a filmmaker uses the lens of a camera to create a senseof reality, Lodge uses verbal descriptions accurately and thus creating a visualized worldwhich is perceptible and even more vivid than actuality.Chapter Two interprets the cinematic use of aural elements in the novel, which includesthe cinematic portrayal of dialogues, mood music, and silent scenes. Adopting sound effects,either dialogue or other audio elements into his novel, Lodge makes the plot flow smoothlyand gives his reader an immersed sense to “hear” as well as to “see”.Chapter Three interprets the cinematic montage editing techniques in the novel, whichincludes the juxtaposed montage spaces and the distorted montage time sequence. Employingmontage editing, the most essential filmmaking technique, Lodge breaks through traditionalliterary spatiotemporal relationships and highlights the real spatial existence of the events, andthus transforming the challenge of visual art into his special writing vantage.Based on the above analysis, the conclusion of this thesis is: David Lodge properlyborrows cinematic narrative techniques in creating Nice Work, which gives the novel a uniquetaste and ever-lasting appeal, and provides a new experimental form for contemporarynovel-creating.