The Academic Double Agent : Criticism and Fiction in David Lodge’s Early Novels
The Academic Double Agent : Criticism and Fiction in David Lodge’s Early Novels

Summary/Abstract: Given David Lodge’s double identity as both a novelist and a university professor and writer of academic criticism, it comes as no surprise that one of the most frequently discussed aspects of his work consists precisely in his position on the threshold between theory and fiction. This paper aims to discuss Lodge’s increasing awareness of the crisis faced by contemporary criticism and the evolution of his own writing on the background of constant changes, as well as the way in which these concerns emerge from both his critical and fictional writing. Rather than pay closer attention to the novels belonging to the academic trilogy, universally regarded as his most representative texts in terms of the fusion of criticism and fiction, this paper will focus on the relationship between the theoretical ideas elaborated in his works of criticism and the often tentative allusions to the study of literature present in his early writings, highlighting the extent to which they anticipate the complex and often spectacular interaction between criticism and fiction that characterises his later novels.

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