Return to search

Slightly Quixotic: Comic Strategies, Sexual Role Stereotyping and the Functionalization of Femininity in David Lodge's Trilogy of Campus Novels under Special Consideration of 'Nice Work' (1988)

In view of the fact that David Lodge’s campus novels are renowned for their ability to make light of traditional gender stereotypes as well as for their purportedly liberal, pro-feminist, intertexual, dialogical and metatextual dimensions, this article seeks to explore more precisely the strategic and unavowedly political functions humour and the comic fulfil in Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work. What will be demonstrated is that Lodge’s light-hearted, tolerant and at times even progressive liberalism is little more than an effect produced by the textual surface structure. In the case of Nice Work, this discrepancy between the surface and the deep structure leads to the paradox that while voyeuristic structures and male bonding are overtly ridiculed, on a deep structural level they are effectively reaffirmed. Though Lodge’s novels are at the level of their surface structure sustained by a logic which uses the “comic mode” as a more or less subtle form to critique traditional gender stereotypes, literary conventions, the British university system and British industry, ultimately his ‘Rummidge trilogy’ reinforces an aesthetically, morally and politically conservative subtext.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:36417
Date23 December 2019
CreatorsHorlacher, Stefan
PublisherDe Gruyter
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relation0340-5222, 1865-8938, 10.1515/ANGL.2007.465

Page generated in 0.0018 seconds