A Study Of The Intellectuals' Identity Crisis In David Lodge's Campus Trilogy

David Lodge,a well-known British scholar,enhances his prestige both as a literary critic and a novelist.Among all his fictions,campus trilogy,which is Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses(1975),Small World: An Academic Romance(1984),and Nice Work(1988),is the most famous.As an academic novelist,he concerns about the physical and psychological state of intellectuals and created many impressive intellectuals in his fictions.Different from traditional intellectuals,those in Lodge's fictions have changed their thoughts and behaviors a lot in an ever-changing society,which leads to their distinctive identity.This thesis will combine western theories about intellectuals with Lodge's concept of intellectuals to analyze intellectuals' identity crisis,mainly focusing on moral degeneration,fading discourse and commercialized academy,under the joint influence of economy,unreasonable educational system and twisted social values.Moreover,Lodge's exploration on intellectuals' identity reconstruction by the descriptions of positive intellectuals will also be included in the analysis in order to provide enlightenments for modern intellectuals' identity reconstruction.This thesis consists of three parts,introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction part briefly presents Lodge's literary achievements and research status.And it will also compare the concept of traditional intellectuals with Lodge's intellectuals in his campus trilogy on the basis of the definition and traditional image of intellectuals so that we can know the deviation between them.The main body is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly makes a description about intellectuals' identity crisis in Lodge's campus fictions which indicates their secularization.Based on the former chapter,the second chapter analyzes the causes of the identity crisis from the perspectives of economic influences,unreasonable education and twisted social values with the combination of fiction text and social background of Lodge.The third chapter illustrates Lodge's exploration on intellectuals' identity reconstruction with the analysis of positive intellectuals in Lodge's campus trilogy.Reading Lodge's works provides not only successful examples for university intellectuals to write novels but also new ways and references for Chinese intellectuals' identity reconstruction.