Small World
(DAVID LODGE)
Small World is a post-structuralist parodying
academic comedy. The characters are a whole collection of high-flying (and not
so high-flying) academics ? among them Fulvia Morgana the millionaire marxist
and Siegfried von Turpitz the Nazi ? who move around the world from one
conference on literary criticism to the next. A $100000 UNESCO chair of
literary criticism is up for grabs, and the competition is intense...
The main subplot is a romance, with Persse McGarrigle chasing Angelica
Pabst, a PhD student who is herself studying Romance. When propositioned she
replies by quoting Keat''s The Eve of St Agnes, and poor Persse is left
wondering what her reading of the poem is. All sorts of interesting literary
tidbits are provided ? among other things we discover that the Japanese
translation of The Merchant of Venice is titled The Strange Affair of
the Flesh and the Bosom.
Small World is great entertainment. You probably need some
understanding of trends in modern literary criticism and a reasonably extensive
knowledge of the canon of English literature to appreciate it fully, but the
reader lacking that will still enjoy it as pure comedy.
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- Small Modern World
- Simple English
- The Advancement Of Learning
- A History Of The English Speaking Peoples
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