The dialogic novels of Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge

Abstract

Morace analyzes the novels of Malcolm Bradbury David Lodge together because they provide a dialogue of conflicting views, styles, forms of the contemporary novel. This dialogue parallels the views of these two British novelists as critics.Beginning as realists, as novelists of manners, as writers of campus novels, Bradbury Lodge explore the possibilities the limitations of realistic writing. Bradbury Lodge, however, are not only heirs of English literary tradition. Both are also literary critics with a keen interest in recent critical theories. Morace shows us how the debate between Bradbury Lodge over the nature purpose of fiction criticism has found its way into their novels. realistic conflicts between civilian military, English American, pre- post-Vatican II values gradually give way to an exploration of the semiotics behind such conflicts.Morace finds Bradbury s Lodge s works far more open-ended than the doggedly indeterminate fictions of many contemporary writers. Using Mikhail Bakhtin s theory of dialogism, he identifies the ways in which language values simultaneously compete with support one another in their novels.This first book-length study of Bradbury or Lodge deals with all of their novels, including Changing Places, How Far Can You Go?, and Small World by Lodge, as well as Bradbury s The History of Man and Rates of Exchange.