Wang Fengzhen David Lodge (David Lodge) is a well-known figure in the UK.In the literary world, he is a famous novelist whose works have won several awards, and he is called the representative of "campus novels"; For the general public, he is also a well-known author because his work was adapted into a TV series and won two awards. In the Chinese cultural circle, Rocky's name is no stranger.His novel "Small World" was translated into Chinese and published a few years ago, and has received considerable praise; the Chinese version of "Literary Criticism of the Twentieth Century" edited by him is also widely circulated in universities and has been quoted by many people; as for his Almost everyone who works in foreign literature teaching and research has read some of his English original works.

Of course, for the majority of Chinese readers, Rocky's name may not be so resounding.Not as good as the British detective writer Agatha Christie, and not as good as the American best-selling author Sheridan.But I can say with certainty that his literary value and influence far exceed that kind of writer! Readers don't blame themselves for not being familiar with Lodge, though.Who let our translators and publishers not introduce him better!Thankfully, Writers Press has decided to launch a series of Rocky's works, including four novels, novels (the campus novel trilogy "Transposition", "Small World" and "Good Job" and "How Far Can You Go?" ") and a collection of literary treatises.The publication of these works will not only provide elegant and interesting reading materials for readers, but also bring beneficial reference and reference to the literary and academic circles.

David Lodge was born in London in 1935. He studied at the University of London and the University of Birmingham successively, and received a doctorate.From 1960 to 1987, he taught in the English Department of the University of Birmingham.He retired early as a professional writer in 1987, but is still an honorary professor at the University of Birmingham and has been a member of the Royal Society of Letters. As mentioned earlier, Lodge writes both fiction and literary criticism, and has accomplished both.His novels mainly include "Movie Fan" (1960), "You Fool" (1962), "The British Museum is Collapsing" (1965), "Beyond the Shelter" (1 1970), "Transposition" (1975), "How Far Can You Go? "(1980), "A Small World" (1984), "Good Job" (1988), "Heavenly News" (1991) and "The Cure" (1995 ).His literary criticism works mainly include "The Language of Fiction" (1966), "Graham Green" (1966), "The Novelist at the Crossroads" (1971), "Eve Lin Waugh (1971), Modern Ways of Writing (1977), Applied Structuralism (1981), After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism (1999 ○) and (1992).In addition, he also edited "Literary Criticism of the Twentieth Century" (1972) and "Modern Critical Theory" (1988); wrote the plays "Four Walls" (1963), "Hitting the Heart" (1965) and "Writing Game" (1990), etc.

Lodge himself once said, "Because I am an academic critic myself,... (so) I am a very self-conscious novelist. When I am writing, my requirements for my own text are different from my requirements for criticizing other writers. The requirements for the text are exactly the same. Every part of the novel, every event, character, and even every word, must obey the unified idea of ​​the whole text.” Lodge said so, and he did so.Every novel he created has paid hard work: through imagination and description, weaving human destiny into a network of time and space, making it show in many aspects such as style, rhetoric, morality, psychology, society and history. significance.Starting from the overall conception, he constantly chooses and chooses characters and events, and embodies his academic views with actual works: he opposes the radical view of "the author is dead", and believes that the various scenes in the works do not happen by accident, nor are the readers' creations. Creation, but the author's conscious conception.

A literary work of artistic value never reveals its inner meaning lightly, but, like the works of Joyce or Eliot, engages the reader actively in the unique way of digging out hidden meanings .This is exactly what Lodge's novels pursue.His works are full of metaphors, metonyms and allegories, fully mobilizing the ability to derive meaning from language and literary conventions, showing the characteristics of a scholar who combines theory with practice.For example, the "Legend of the Holy Grail" structure of "Little World" makes many characters travel long distances, meet frequently in different places and different gatherings, and have entanglements, which not only maintains the continuity of the narrative but also makes readers deeply interested.This approach enables the author to reflect the negation of post-structuralism in the work itself, and at the same time express some characteristics of post-structuralism in an ironic way: all words are both signifiers and signifieds, and language has no definite meaning. Writing is a word game, readers can give any meaning to the text, and the meaning is always in the process of deconstruction.Perth's pursuit of Angelica, and Wainwright's inability to write a paper, can be said to be the author's expression of his views on post-structuralism through metaphors and tropes.

However, Lodge is not opposed to all new theories, for example, he is very appreciative of certain views of reception aesthetics.He himself wrote: "In a sense, the novel is a game, a game played by at least two people: a reader and an author. The author attempts to control and direct the reader's reactions outside the text itself. , like a card player rising from his seat every now and then, and walking round the table to look at his opponent's cards, to instruct him which one to play. I hope I have not yet spoiled the reader with such a mistake." In other words, due to the special function of language itself, no matter how strong the consciousness of the writer is; the work will also produce certain meanings beyond the consciousness of the writer; these meanings depend on the reader, and the reader can not only understand the consciousness of the writer through the reading process, but also You can construct new meanings based on the text and your own consciousness projection, so as to obtain the enjoyment or pleasure of an aesthetic activity.Precisely because he attaches great importance to the active role of readers, Lodge often expresses profound events in a way that readers like to hear and see.

Roughly speaking, Lodge's novels have the following distinctive features. In terms of subject matter, he is good at writing about the life of intellectuals and academia.Almost all of his most famous novels take intellectuals (such as professors and students) as the main characters, and radiate to the society with cultural events.The "Campus Trilogy" to be published by the Writer's Publishing House can be described as a representative of this type of novel.For example, "Transposition" writes that two professors in the United States and the United Kingdom exchanged positions according to the exchange plan. After experiencing a series of cultural conflicts, they gradually integrated into the local environment, got involved in the local student movement, and exchanged positions unconsciously. wife, family and car. In addition to continuing to write about two professors, "A Small World" uses young teachers Perth and Angelica as the protagonists to describe various scenes in contemporary western academia, from academic conferences to love pursuits, from chasing fame and fortune to pleasure-seeking , from theoretical interpretation to the conflict of moral concepts, presents a vivid and interesting social picture. "Good Job" radiates from school life to society through the relationship between young female teacher Miss Robin and factory manager Vic, and describes the relationship between university and industrial society, feminism and machismo, humanists and entrepreneurs All kinds of contradictions.Obviously, the choice of this subject matter is inseparable from Lodge's identity and experience as a professor.

In terms of writing techniques, his works run through his own theory.Based on modern linguistic theory, he makes full use of metaphor, allegory and metonymy, mobilizes various comedy factors within the framework of the overall conception, and writes humorously and full of wit.He breaks the traditional space-time relationship and emphasizes the current experience; he does not pay attention to the continuous order of time, but emphasizes the real existence of the event itself in space.Therefore, the narration of his works is often like the montage or flashback method of a movie, interspersed, jumped, and interspersed to form an object in an absolute space.But this kind of narrative is a bit like photographic realism, as if abstract expressionism returns to description after anti-descriptive abstraction, but it is not realistic description in the end.In this regard, Lodge's novels have dual characteristics of modernism and postmodernism.

In addition, Lodge is good at making comprehensive use of techniques and characteristics of other genres, such as Gothic novels, love legends, popular biographies, detective novels, crime novels, and so on.On the one hand, he maintains an elegant cultural taste, and at the same time, he takes into account the commercial pollution suffered by the public readers, and tries to bridge the gap between high-level art and commercial forms, blazing a path of both refined and popular tastes.Therefore, his works are often interspersed with romantic love stories, and sometimes there are descriptions of sex life, nightclubs, X-rated movies and stripteases.He borrows the mystery and suspense from detective novels, and through fables and symbols, tries to catch the reader's psychology as much as possible, so that they not only enjoy reading but also must fully develop their imagination.Therefore, although Lodge's novels are full of profound meanings, they are always highly readable.

As a generalization of his own writing experience and the result of novel research, Lodge's novels undoubtedly have extremely high reference value.In fifty short articles, he starts with the "beginning" of the novel and ends with the "end" of the novel, and analyzes various aspects of novel writing in a simple and simple way, such as "suspense", "perspective", "consciousness". flow", "defamiliarization", "readers in the text", "magic realism", "symbolism", "allegory", "irony", "metafiction", "narrative structure", etc. The art of novels also involves the art of novels of modernism and postmodernism.Before each article, one or two excerpts of wonderful works are cited as examples, and the examples are used as the verification of his analysis and explanation, which is both deep and easy to understand.Therefore, it is called "the most outstanding novel research work for the public since Forster's "Aspects of the Novel".

All in all, Lodge's works are definitely the best works of contemporary British literature.They will not only be welcomed by literati and scholars, but also by ordinary readers because of their interest and readability. Believe it or not?As Rocky said, "This task is entrusted to you." December 1997 in Beijing