On The Characterization Of Pseudo-intellectuals In Small World From The Perspective Of Narratology

David Lodge is an accomplished British academic novelist and literary critic. Based on his own life experience, his novels mainly center on the campus academic life as well as the intellectuals. And he favors integrating his consideration of the reality into his literary creation. Written in 1984, Small World:An Academic Romance is one of David Lodge's masterpieces. It is the second book of his best-known "Campus Trilogy". Small World is a story about a group of global scholars, who are travelling around the world for various academic conferences. The superb narrative skills make the images of the characters significantly impressive and vivid. There are numerous dissertations, journal papers and books striving to conduct some analyses on his novels as well as the characters' images. However, most of them are inclined to focus on the themes and artistic techniques, rarely concentrating upon the characterization of the intellectuals from the perspective of narratology. The scholars in Small World are philistine and corruptive who are entirely different from the conventional ones. Thus, this study labels the scholars in this novel as "pseudo-intellectuals", who are further divided into three types: romanticists, hedonists, and ultra-utilitarians on the basis of their different pursuing goals. In addition, based on the theory of classical narratology, this study conducts an in-depth analysis on the characterization of the three types of pseudo-intellectuals from the narrative point of view, narrative structure, and narrative speech respectively. This dissertation is intended to reveal David Lodge's consideration of the non-enterprise, hedonism, and ultra-utilitarianism of the post-industrial intellectuals, and further bring to light his efforts to get rid of the decay and corruption of the modern academic circle, and to rebuild the elite-consciousness of intellectuals as well.