Parody of the academy in the novels of david lodge and malcolm bradbury

This thesis explores a comparison of two of the principal craftsmen of Modern BritishFiction, David Lodge and Malcolm Bradbury, whose works, as well as their lives, areimmensely interrelated and dialogic. My attention is devoted especially to the two authors'differing deployment of postmodernism and post-structuralist theory, as well as variants ofmore traditional devices such as parody, satire, and double imagery in a discourse aimed atcriticizing the academy by being seriously funny. I also underline both authors? contributioninto the academic novel with their representative works while keeping the development thissub-genre as a background to this study and analysing it according to the perceptions ofElaine Showalter in Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents (2005).This study takes into consideration four novels by David Lodge: (The Picturegoers(1960), The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), Changing Places (1975), and SmallWorld (1984)) and three novels by Malcolm Bradbury namely Eating People is Wrong(1959), Stepping Westward (1965), The History Man (1975), and a novella titled Mensonge:My Strange Quest for Structuralism?s Hidden Hero (1987). During the course of the study, Iconsult and refer to various literary criticisms written by both authors as well as other theoriesof the major critics of literary theory but my utmost attention is on Mikhail Bakhtin?sconception of parody with means of having ?dualistic characteristics? that is directly linkedwith his idea of ?Carnival?.In my comparison of these two equally talented craftsmen, I concentrate on two mainpoints. My first point is to analyse both authors? treatment of the academy through theirimaginary characters that are mainly shaped as academics, who are pictured in an endlessquest for recognition and power. My second point is an attempt to reply Amanda Craig?swondering in her review of David Lodge?s Consciousness and the Novel (2002), ? ? why[David Lodge], unlike Bradbury, has not been knighted yet for his services to literature [for]he is the much better critic and novelist? (2).