Poststructuralism, postmodernism and British academic attitudes: with special reference to David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury and Gabriel Josipovici
The central sections of this thesis examine the critical and fictional writing of three British academics, David Lodge, Malcolm Bradbury and Gabriel Josipovici, in order to elucidate their attitudes towards poststructuralist and postmodernist thinking in the quarter century roughly between the mid-nineteen sixties and the late nineteen eighties. Chapter One explores David Lodge's approach to literary criticism with particular reference to his interest in the Formalist version of Structuralism, his concern with the development of a critical language with which to analyse the novel and his use of metaphor and metonymy in this process. It also points to his concern at the encroachment of continental theory into Anglo-American critical practice. The related Chapter Two traces the development of Lodge's fictional writing, showing how his critical activity interrelates with his fiction and indicating a native preference for realism. Chapter Three focuses on Malcolm Bradbury's critical work, highlighting its concern with matters of a sociological rather than linguistic nature and indicating the shifts in his thought from a defence of liberalism in the face of determinism to increasing interest in American postmodernism. Chapter Four shows how his major works of fiction contextualize these concerns, particularly in regard to the liberal humanist's relationship with different versions of historical determinism. Chapter Five elucidates Gabriel Josipovici's 'lessons of modernism' as they are outlined in his critical writing and explores his reference to the Middle Ages and Renaissance in his understanding of both modernism and realism. Chapter Six shows how Josipovici incorporates his views of modernism in his experimental works of fiction and the ways in which this activity may coincide with the postmodern agenda. There are two appendices. The first describes statistically the degree to which poststructuralism has penetrated the teaching of English in British Higher Education. The second surveys the Methuen New Accents series.
800 Literature & rhetoric, 820 English & Old English literatures
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