Antiheroes In David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy

David Lodge, a renowned novelist and critic, whose works are popular among critics both at home and abroad, especially his Campus Trilogy — Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work are so famous in the literary world. In the Campus Trilogy, Lodge portrays various absurd university scholars to expose the corruption of the academic community, thus reveals the degradation of the whole society. Based on the analysis of Lodge’s characters in the Campus Trilogy, the author intends to explore the fictional characters depicted by Lodge from the perspective of “anti-hero” thus takes a roll to the entire literary world.The word “antihero” first makes its appearance in Notes from the Underground by the Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, and the word is put forward to fight against the positive figures. In Lodge’s Campus Trilogy, all the intellectuals have fully expected to obtain material comforts and sensory stimulation. As scholars in the university, they never focus on their scholarship, but devote themselves to chase fame and fortune. Definitely different from the traditional images of intellectuals, they would never be regarded as heroes but turned into antiheroes.The thesis consists of three parts including: an introduction, the main body and a conclusion. The introduction briefly describes the life of Lodge, his literary achievements and the main content of Campus Trilogy, then it explores the literary review on the three novels at home and abroad, at last the paper ends with a brief description of the purpose of this thesis.The first chapter brings out the traditional concepts of antiheroes and its literature review, then provides an overview of the traditional concepts of hero complex. Afterwards the author analyzes the transformation from heroes to antiheroes under the influence of society, economy and politics then finally concludes the antihero features embodied in the characters of Lodge’s Campus Trilogy.The second chapter brings out three different types of antiheroes according to three evaluation criteria and then depicts the behavior and performance of the antiheroes. The intellectuals in the Campus Trilogy are corrupt in life and commercialized in scholarship, on the other hand, in such a boom there are even some scholars who are still immersed in their own world, lost in the tide of history. Thus we can see that the scholars in the university have totally lose the traditional halo of academics but doom to all kinds of antiheroes.The third chapter focuses on the reasons why all these antiheroes emerge and the convention of the academic purpose, then draws a conclusion that either the literature, literary criticism and university education are riddled with insuperable crisis. In that case, the whole academic circle is full of meaninglessness and ridiculousness, and the education system also comes to its end, thus all of these factors finally stimulate the generation of the antiheroes.The forth chapter explains Lodge’s profound intention of exploring the antiheroes in his Campus Trilogy. On the one hand, Lodge mercilessly castigates the corruption and degradation of the scholars in university to exhibit the features of the antiheroes, aiming to make a reflection to the academic circle. On the other hand, he would never completely loss confidence to the literary world so he also anchors his hope on his characters and gives an open ending to each novel to express his expectations for the unknown future.The last part summarizes what has been analyzed in the previous four chapters and points out that, the fictional world that Lodge depicts is mirroring the reality to warn people especially the intellectuals that when facing with the new phase, one should cling to himself. The same is true of China, since the profound social reform, the serious impact on ideology and the great influence of cultural traditions make the intellectuals be mired in searching for their self-identities, they get lost and can not recognize what role they should play in society. So the descriptions of antiheroes in Lodge’s novels also provide a new idea and sets a new example to the issue of identity construction in the new era of our country.