GOTHIC NOVEL

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto in 1764 is the first Gothic novel to be published; in it, you can find
all the horrors that define the gothic novel; bleeding statues, portraits that move, and mysterious appearances
of disjointed arms and legs, which have become typical of the genre.
The castle is haunted by Alonso, the ghost of the previous owner of the house, who warns that a future
catastrophe will befall it. This ghost wants the destruction of the castle since it has been usurped by Manfred;
a prince of Otranto. Manfred’s son wants to marry Isabella, but the day before a helmet falls from the sky and
kills him. Manfred tries to get Isabella for himself and marry her. Isabella escapes with the help of Theodore,
who resembles the owner of the house (the one before Manfred, Alonso). Manfred wants Theodore executed,
but Alonso helps him escape. Isabelle marries Theodore and they inherit everything, Theodore is the rightful
heir since he is related to Alonso. Manfred is punished for his aggravations.

• Heroine → Isabelle, who is unprotected.

• Hero → Theodore
• Villain → Manfred

It was published in the 18th century, the age of enlightenment/reason (a period of rigorous scientific, political
and philosophical discourse).
Horace Walpole was afraid of rejection by the public because the book didn’t fit society's standards. In the 1st
edition, he claims that the book was a translation of William Marshall from an old Italian manuscript. After
the novel was successful, he said he was the author.
It is important because it started a tradition followed by many writers, not because it is necessarily a good
novel.

Ann Redcliffe followed this tradition and is considered the best gothic novelist of the 18th century.
At the end of each novel, she gives a rational explanation for all the horrors that appear.
Redcliffe was ignorant of the Catholic church; she placed nuns and monks in the same place; in England,
people are protestants, so they don’t necessarily know anything about the Catholic church and how it works.

The Mysteries of Udolpho 1794 tells how Emily, wants to marry Valancourt, when her aunt, also her
guardian, marries Montoni (the villain).
Montoni forbids the marriage of Emily and Valancourt, and he takes both women to a Gothic castle in the
Apennine, an isolated, non-easily accessible place in the mountains.
He wants to secure the property of both women for himself; the aunt dies from imprisonment, and Emily is
forced to give him her inheritance. In the end, Montoni is captured by authorities, and Emily regains her
inheritance and marries Valancourt.

The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitent 1797, is considered to be her best novel.
Ellena is in love with Vivaldi, and they want to get married; Vivaldi’s mother, from the aristocracy, plots with
Schedoni to get rid of the girl in a monastery (Schedoni is a priest and he is also the confessor of Vivaldi’s
mother). Ellena escapes with Vivaldi. Schedoni turns Vivaldi to the inquisition and is about to kill Ellena
when he finds out she is his daughter; the villain now has the couple, but he dies.
In the end, Ellena and Vivaldi keep the inheritance.
In all these novels, the villain always dies in the end, and scenes of fear and imprisonment happen in places
like mountains, dark, rocky crags and deep gorges, and underground; these settings are used to cause terror to
the reader.

Redcliffe set her stories in the 16th century, but she is not accurate about historical details; her characters
behave like people of her own time; she was not writing historical fiction. Redcliffe's handling of stories is
brilliant, in a sense, she initiated the genre of the thriller.
Mathew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk 1796, in most Gothic novels, you find this type of terror; potential
horror.
In the case of this author, there is terror and actual horror, which makes him stand out from the rest; horrors do
become real.
Lewis is important and different, some examples, directly touching rotten meat or the slow death of the villain
eaten by insects for 6 days; "Carried by the devil and dropped, the character comes in contact with rotten
flesh.”

GOTHIC NOVEL WRITTEN BY WOMEN

It allowed them to give voice to the oppression and the fact that they were outsiders to society, which was
essentially male.
The main writers are Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, and Charlotte Smith.
The combination of fantasy and realism allowed them to give voice to the oppression in an indirect way.
Women had to be passive, quiet, docile, meek and obedient, if novels were written with the opposite of what
was expected they would have been rejected.

Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication to the Rights of Women 1794, is the first feminist manifesto. There are
some Gothic elements but she is not considered a Gothic novelist. She attacked patriarchy in a direct way. She
argued women should receive a better education. She also believed that men and women were intellectually
equal and that mental powers had to be cultivated. She wanted to be educated so she could become a better
wife, sister, and woman. She didn’t ask for the same opportunities because it was a different period from now.
She was very subversive in her personal life. She went to France and there she started a relationship; with an
American man, she was in love with him and she got pregnant. 1 year after giving her partner was having
affairs with different women and she was devastated when the relationship ended, so she tried to commit
suicide twice. Once in England, she started a relationship with the philosopher Godwin. None of them
believed in marriage but she got pregnant again, deciding to get married. She died right after giving birth to
her second daughter; Mary Shelley, because of an infection. Godwin decided to publish a memoir about her
private life. This destroyed her reputation and her name wasn’t mentioned for over a decade, at that time there
were many problems concerning chastity, and because she didn’t marry, she was considered a prostitute.
Previous to that nobody knew about her private life.
In the realistic novels written by women in the 19th century, the heroine suffers from temporary dreams of
insanity. These dreams of insanity allowed these writers to reflect female suffering and pain. The language and
images used by these writers are also used by the female writers of Gothic novels. There is a huge difference;
in realistic novels, the heroines wake up and come to their senses again, dreaming only for a while, adapting
themselves to the world in which they live. However, in the case of the Gothic novel, there is no reality to
come back to because the world is a nightmare.
Women were alienated from the culture. Their identity was denied because they were women. Gothic novels
allowed criticism of this in an indirect way and it also allowed the expression of what couldn’t be said.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre 1847 is about an Orphan, Jane, who starts to work for Rochester as a
governess. She has to look after a girl. Jane falls in love with Rochester, the hero of the novel, but she hears
voices, screams, and laughter all the time. She asked if there were other people living in the house. Everyone
tells her that there is no one. However, Bertha Mason, who was a creole heiress that got married to Rochester
in the West Indies, lives in the attic. She is Rochester’s 1st wife and she is mad. Her madness is the reason
why she is locked up. Since she is crazy, she gets away with everything and she can do things other women
can’t do; laughing, and wearing tight clothes (women in the 19th century were not allowed to laugh). Before
Jane and Rochester could get married, Bertha destroys Jane’s veil; she can do this because she is mad. By
destroying the veil, she is warning Jane; she is telling her to be careful because once you get married you
become a victim of patriarchy and men have absolute power over their wives. Bertha becomes mad because of
Victorian society and the oppression forced upon women. This is a huge criticism of the Victorian society that
Victorian readers were not aware of.

Jean Rhys’s Wilde Sargasso Sea 1966 tells the story from Bertha’s point of view. She was free in Jamaica,
Dominica, but when she came back to England, she became a victim of patriarchy, which made her mad. She
was a creole heiress there.
Something interesting about these novels is those female writers created a new kind of heroine. Before that,
heroines were chaste, and virtuous...which is something that they cannot change in society. Women like
Wollstonecraft attacked these standards. They also said that the double standard is unfair, everyone has to be
chaste, even males. They learned to think and act for themselves. In novels written by men, women are
submissive and men seduce them with a vision of patriarchal powers; if you marry me, you will have
economic and social powers.
In female novels, heroines don’t need a man, they learned how to act for themselves; they are not seduced by
wishes, they marry and choose the man they love, they learn how to protect themselves and they show
strength and intelligence. In the novels written by women, men and women are morally and intellectually
equal. They create this type of story in which women can think for themselves. In Gothic novels, there is
always inheritance, and fortunes at stake. In the end, heroines defeat patriarchy and they get the inheritance.
However, in the realistic novels the only option, or best, was to get married and inside marriage, men had
absolute power.
They created a new feminized man; they are converted to equalitarian and feminist principles. He shows
tenderness, kindness, and sensibility, attributes usually associated with women. This new hero does not use his
power to exploit women and he doesn’t consider women his property. He doesn’t try to impose his feelings on
the heroine because he wants the heroine to have a choice in the relationship and he also considers them
morally and intellectually equal. He is tender, sensitive, feminist, and even vulnerable. Female writers try to
avoid the passionate and dominant aggressive hero because they are a threat to women’s freedom.

Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline. She is not in love with him but he abducts her. He cannot control himself; he
tries to impose his feelings on her. She succeeds in escaping. The hero’s sister commits adultery and has a
child and the brother forgives her and offers her protection. He is in love with Emmeline but he doesn’t say
anything. He is so sensitive; he cares so much about Emmeline. He waits, he controls himself and his feelings
because he wants Emmeline to have a choice, and he even cries. In the end, she married him. In this novel,
you have both representations of men.
Most marriages were arranged. Many people in the 18th century started to defend companionate marriage; it
was based on respect, love, affection, and equality… the problem was that there were no changes in the law. It
kept on being dependent on whether your husband loved and defended you.
In some Gothic novels, the hero gets wounded. Rochester (the hero of Jane Eyre) gets wounded (blind in one
eye), he loses one hand and it seems as if one of these heroes gets wounded, they have the courage to face
patriarchy and they get better.
From the beginning, Gothic novels were concerned with imprisonment.

Sophia Lee’s The Recess 1783-1786 is about two illegitimate daughters of Mary Queen of Scots and because
of that reason, they are put into a cavern and brought up there. They have no identity because they are
illegitimate, just like women in the 19th century. Like many other gothic works, they show the imprisonment
of women to represent the oppression they felt.
Many scenes take place in dungeons and caverns, especially in the 19th century. You can also find other
scenes and settings. In Jean Eyre, there is a red room, where she got punished.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818. Frankenstein’s monster is a monster that only women could create. Since
he is a monster, he is an outsider to society in the same way women were. Women are not responsible for their
situation just like the monster and neither of them could possibly change it. The monster is deprived of
privileges just like women were not given privileges.
 VICTORIAN NOVEL

The main achievements are in the field of the novel but there were very good poets as well, but cannot
compare. When people talk about the Victorian age, scholars talk about Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens
and T.S Eliot.

It was an age of great change as a result of industrialization. They saw the growth of the industrial city,
especially of a national railway network. It not only changes notions of time, and landscape but also the notion
of distance.

The railway was a symbol of a new age. There were political, religious and social changes throughout the 19th
century. The old criminal code was revised during the 19th century, it was very brutal before. In 1929,
metropolitan police were established and then extended to other towns in the country.
When talking about the Victorian novel we discern different tendencies; there are different types of novels.

The Victorian Novel. The Early Victorians.

The Condition of England novel is also called the industrial novel.

One of the symbols was the railway engine. It brought the towns of Britain closer together and it showed the
dirt and misery of industrial cities. It showed the negative effects and also the miracles of industrialization.
People could travel more than before so; they became aware of the industrial revolution. The incredible power
of the new machines; before the industrial revolution there were no commodities. There is also the emergence
of a new social class; the middle class. In this sense, people admired the new independence of the new
aristocracy (owners of companies/people with money) of employers and their energy. The bad ones were; the
destruction and breakdown of traditional patterns/relationships. Many people had to leave their homes because
things changed, they had to go to the cities. The different social classes were segregated into self-enclosed
classes, you can go to any district but you are not welcomed; that means that there was no contact with the
middle class or upper class, and they were separated. This produced a lot of suffering, destitution, hunger (in
poor people) and terrible living conditions, there were no sanitary conditions, filth was everywhere and they
didn’t have much to eat.

One thing Dickens denounces in Hard Times is that conditions should be improved.
The industrial revolution brought richness to a few and misery to the majority of people. The agricultural
working class was forced to leave the country and go to the industrial cities to find a job. In the cities, there
were very long work hours in terrible conditions, and jobs for miserable wages.

Most writers of this period wrote novels to denounce the situation of the industrial cities but they lacked
knowledge about what happened. All of them had superficial knowledge about what happened in industrial
cities. All these writers belonged to the middle class. In the case of the conditions, they got the information
from written documents or read parliamentary reports, and then, wrote novels. Benjamin Disraeli read
parliamentary reports and decided to write Sybil. Elizabeth Gaskell was the exception. She lived in an
industrial city because she was married to a prime minister.

Dickens went to an industrial city and he witnessed a strike in Brexton, so he decided to write Hard Times and
other novels like David Copperfield.

One of the problems was how to make novels attractive to readers because they talk about work in the
factories, which is very monotonous. Moreover, their suffering was not interesting. Victorian writers decided
to introduce a romantic plot in the novels because they realized that if that was included, the public would like
novels much more. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, the initial title was John Barton, was initially going to
be about the typical struggles of a working-class man, and there are those elements included, but then she
decided to introduce a romantic plot, and the new title was more attractive.

There were trade unions (in the 19th century) that tried to defend workers’ rights and there was a working-
class movement called Chartism. Writers, who were middle-class people were terrified of both. What
Chartism wanted was to secure working-class representation in parliament. However, the middle class was
afraid of the masses and of those defending it becoming violent. In the 1840s there were troubles in France
and they feared those coming to England, they were never violent, and all of them disliked unions.

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times defends the workers but he criticizes the union leader; he doesn’t work and
tries to manipulate the workers.
Most of Dickens’s novels were set in London and he knew a lot about it but Hard Times doesn’t represent it
well, these novels show the fears and fantasies of the middle class. Writers could not offer a solution to the
problem. They talked about understanding each other, and charity… but not about real solutions because they
had no deep knowledge about it.

William Makepeace Thackeray wrote Vanity Fair he satirizes society; it is a novel in which he addresses
society.

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

The Victorian Novel. The Mid-Victorians.

By the 1850s the mood had changed and the sense of crisis/tension has gone. We have a movement to a more
relaxed and domestic fiction. The 1850s is the age of domestic realism. Writers described in their novels
everyday middle-class men.

George Eliot’s Middlemarch is a masterpiece.

The sensational novels are about middle-class life but inside the plot, there are exotic or criminal cities.

Wilkie Colins’ Moonstone The main character is a woman who is insane she has murdered her 1st husband
and she is about to poison her 2nd husband.

Mrs. Henry Wood (Ellen)’s East Lynne. There is a lady here and she is seduced by a villain. Who abandons
her and she commits adultery, so she is socially dead. Everybody believes she has died but she returns to her
husband disfigured and disguised to become the governess to her children, the children do not and cannot
recognize her. Nobody knows she is the mother because this couldn’t be accepted. Her husband has married
again and they seem very happy. She cannot tell her children she is their mother. She is being punished and
the situation is very painful and hard. There are no 2nd chances. At the end of the novel middle-class moral
values prevail.

Lewis Carol’s Alice’s Adventures in wonderland is not a realistic novel

The main tendency is domestic/realistic novels.

The Victorian Novel. The Late Victorians.

At the end of the Victorian period, there is a trend/movement with more private, psychological writing.
Henry James’ Portrait of a lady. He was a very innovative writer.
Streams of consciousness was a phrase coined by William James, who was a psychologist and he was Henry
James’ brother. He used it to refer to the continuous flow of thoughts and emotions in the human mind. Critics
have used this phrase to refer to a kind of modernist fiction that tries to imitate this process. Henry James was
the 1st writer to use the stream of consciousness. He believed that by focusing on the emotions and thought of
characters he was being realistic. In most novels before him, an omniscient narrator is present; these types of
narrators know everything. The opposite is fallible; these types of narrators only have a portion of the
information. He rejected the omniscient narrator because he wanted to be realistic and he decided to tell the
story from the point of view of various or one character, respecting the limitations of human knowledge; we
don’t know everything. What characters think and what characters feel is more important than what happens
in the novel (in the case of Henry James), which is why it was more important to find the right centre of
consciousness from which to tell the story. You must find a character that is intelligent and observes what
happens around them and they are capable of making comments analyze what is going on. Choosing the right
point of view is one of the most important decisions a writer has to make.

Henry James’ What Maisie knew. He presents a group of characters where many committed adultery, but the
whole story is told from the point of view of a child, Maisie, since she is a child she cannot understand. A man
starts to touch her but she doesn't understand and thinks that he is in love with her. If the point of view were to
change, the story would have been told differently.
Henry James focused on the thought and emotions of the characters. He rejected what is called the close
ending because life is not like that, you never know what is going to happen afterwards. He just closes the
novel.

Most people didn’t like his novels because they were not used to his way of writing. So, he started to
playwright, which was also a failure. He ended up very disappointed. Victorian people were used to easier
novels to read.

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

Samuel Buttler’s Erewhon is a dystopia set in the present. It narrates how a man crosses a mountain and finds
himself in a different world. Dystopias are usually set in the future and describe a fragmented world.
George Gissing and George Moore; the urban slum novel. They wrote about life in the slums.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Islands, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This person has
two personalities.

There are many different styles in the late Victorians.

Most Victorian novelists belonged to the middle class, readers also belonged to the middle class. Most times
novels were read aloud in the family circle.
Novels were published in 3 ways.

• Book forms à usually 3 volumes

• Serialization à magazines or periodical
• Serialization à monthly parts.

The benefits of serialization (paid or subscriptions) helped to create a close relationship between readers and
writers. Sometimes readers influenced the development of the novel. If sales were going down, writers would
change the plot so readers would like it again. Thomas Hardy serialized his novels
When talking about the Victorian novel, critics usually called or referred to them as the great age of realism.
However, not all of them were realistic, but there is one sense in which they are all realistic, the thought that
novels could tell and represent the truth about reality. By doing so novels could change the readers.
Charles Dickens aimed to make readers aware of the abuses of society by talking about life in the slums,
about insanity…By describing reality, you could change the readers' point of view. He was concerned by
insanity and madness, he visited asylums; he thought people there should receive the right medical treatment
and be treated with compassion. He wanted to change the readers' point of view of these people, he wanted
people to be treated better.
He wrote about the hygienic conditions in slums but in a softer way and readers knew that. He once showed
the differences between what the first wrote vs what he published. He realized what readers wanted and
needed; they wanted to know the truth but more softly.
Early Victorians had a very thoughtful vision of the future while the late Victorians were a very pessimistic
vision of the future and present.
 THOMAS HARDY

There are different types of divisions; “novels of character and environment”, “romances and fantasies” and
“novels of ingenuity”.

He was born in Dorset, and he spent all his childhood and adolescence in the country. This made him
accounted with the sights, sounds, smells of rural life. He was going to explore his knowledge of rural life in
his novels. He started working as an apprentice to an architect and then decided to go to London to follow his
career as an architect. In 1867 ill-held, he was force to go back to Dorset, resuming his previous life. It seems
to be about this time that he decided to start writing poetry and fiction.
The decision to write fiction sprout from necessity rather than joy. He wanted to be a poet but he realized that
he could not earn a living with it.

The 1st novel he wrote was The Poor Man and the Lady. By the Poor Man but it disappeared. We don’t know
what it is like, but in his autobiography, he talks about the novel. He attacks and criticized Christianity; he
rejected religion. He also criticized political and domestic morals. He attacked everything. The point of view
of this novel was socialist, he used it to criticized society. He was a novelist that confronted society. He sent a
manuscript to a firm and they rejected the novel. He repeated the process with another publisher. The second
publisher who read his novel was George Meredith was the one reading it, he gave Hardy the advice not to
publish as he would write it, that it would be better to drastically rewrite the book or write a new one because
it would be rejected by the conservatist, who were the majority of readers. So, he decided to write a new
novel.

In the novels written about this time, we have a sense that Hardy was looking for a kind of fiction that was
congenial to his temperament and experience and likely to find acceptance in the literary market place.
Desperate Remedies belongs to the novels of ingenuity and it is his 3rd novel, is a sensational novel, which
was a very popular genre, that is easy to sell but he also explored his knowledge in rustic life and speech. This
is what readers most liked about the novel.

Under the Greenwood Tree, is realistic novel and belongs to the novels of character and environment, he
explores his knowledge of rural life. He noticed that what readers liked about his previous novel was the rural
part and not so much the genre.

Hardy criticizes society in his novels. Thus, he had problems when publishing. Some of the elements were
immoral form the point of view of society. Some readers complained about the content. It became harder with
his last two novels; Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure.

He was wounded by the treatment Tess received; he was sensitive and he found that the criticism Tess
received was humiliating. It was written for a firm of strong nonconformist tradition, who were very religious
and traditional. He sent them the 1st part of the novel; the editors were offended. In this first part, Tess is
seduced by a man without being married, she gets pregnant and she tries to baptise the child, but the priest
denies so she decides to baptize the child herself. This part was told to be deleted because it could offend
readers, but he refused so, the contract was cancelled. The second editor told him that he was too frank when
dealing with sex and marriage. The second part was also rejected so he ended up removing those episodes and
started the process of “dismemberment”. He published these episodes separately as sketches for adult readers,
which had no problems, it was the children listening to it the offending part. The problem came when the
novel was published as a book because he decided to reintroduce the two episodes he had removed.
The novel was criticized because of the content and it sold so much better than his previous novels because of
controversy. Some critics praised the moral seriousness and the tragic power of the novel, but most said that it
was the most disagreeable story, told in the most disagreeable way.

After that he published Jude the Obscure, it happened the same and it sold better than Tess. They said the
novel was a moral monstrosity, some critics praised the novel, saying that it was a masterpiece.
In the case of Tess, the problem came when the novel was first serialized. So, publishers said that he should be
careful with the content, omitting anything that could offend the readers, since these novels were read out
loud. People still bought his novels, are Tess and Jude.

Many readers considered Tess indecent and obscene and with Jude happened the same. However, critics said
that it was a master piece, that he had created a working-class hero. In the case of Tess, he should have
anticipated the criticism that the novel received. There’s adultery, people living together…
He serialized his novels firsts. The publishers asked him to alter the chapter he had already written. However,
he didn’t want to do it so he asked the publishers to cancel the agreement but they refused to do so. “They had
an agreement, so he had to follow”. In the case of Tess, he had to remove the episodes that could offend the
reader. The problem appeared when he was going to published in book form.

The Well-beloved, belongs to romances and fantasies, was published after Jude in book form but it was
serialized before Jude. He said it was a book for young people and adults, so it wouldn’t offend anyone.
BOOKS WERE READ ALOUD. The book was about the main character’s sexual impression abilities. It was
attacked for its morality. Hardy was deeply wounded; he said the problem was in the review who was affected
by sex mania.

The publication of The Well-beloved brought to a close more than 25 years of uninterrupted activity
publishing. He would never write a novel again. He wrote other things. There are several answers to why he
abandoned the novels. Maybe he was offended and wounded by the criticism his later novels received. Hardy
was earning a lot of money with his novels, now he could write for himself and not for the publishers,
reviewers, editors. Now, he could write poetry, which is what he like most. And the other is that fiction
abandoned him, many of late Victorian writers started experimenting with form. He wasn’t interested in
experimenting with form. He never actually gives a reason. All these are speculations. He was a great poet,
there is little development in his poetry. No much difference between his first poems and late poems. He said
his poems were his essential writing, while his fiction was accidental because he wrote novels to earn a living.
He always discouraged people to read his novels, instead to read his poems. That’s how much he valued his
poetry.

His wife dies in 1912, this affected him emotionally, they were happy and in love in the 1st years of their
marriage, but it turned to bitterness. They never separated, remaining under the same roof but with no relation.
He published in 1912 “Poems of 1912”; he revived the emotions and feelings he experienced in the early
years of his marriage but at the same time he was aware that those feeling belonged to the past.

He was born in 1840 and died in 1928, he wrote until the end of his life. His best poetry in his old age. He was
born before the railway come to (). When he died in 1928 the news was telephoned to London and
broadcasted on the radio. It shows how much life had changed. The length of his career has few parallels in
modern literature. He was born in the age of Dickens; he started writing in the age of George Elliot. He
continued writing in the Victorian period and also during the age of modernist writers, James Joyce. He wrote
at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, then survived to write to keep writing.
He hated people written about his life and being the subject of many biographical critical studies and works.
The Life of Thomas Hardy is supposed to be a biography written by him, he didn’t like people writing about
him. Many believed that he wrote it himself because of that.
Social historians have been interested in his novels because Thomas Hardy was a great chronical of rural life.
When reading Tess there are many references to ritual and costumes.

Critics also had tried to find a philosophy of life in his novels, some had said that he was a pessimist. He
always rejected this label. He was an evolutionary meliorist, that is someone that believes that society is going
to change for better. In the case of Hardy, truth is very complex. He rejected Christians believes and doctrines
but at the same time, he admired the external manifestation of faith. This means that he really enjoyed church
buildings and services. He liked church music. Hardy is very complex. He liked the language of the bible. He
was a man of many intellectual interests; he had many friends. He could move to a different social level. He
was a very wise man of business. He took good care of the money he received as a writer. He was a very
complex character, very interesting figure.

Hardy serialized his novels for 2 reasons, if you serialized your novels, you always received a regular
payment. And the second reason is that if readers like the novels, they would buy the novels when it was
published in book form. So, they could earn more with the serialization and the actual book.
He divided his novels into 3 groups; “novels of characters and environment”, “romances and fantasies”,
“novels of ingenuity”.

His 1st novels are the best. The others were minor novels and they belonged to different genres and subgenres.
The main differences between the novels, is that in the major novels the setting is very different and restricted,
usually a rural community. It’s true that in the case of Tess there are different settings. In Jude the Obscure he
leaves the country and goes to a university town (there a is a change). In minor novels you find variety of
settings; rural, continental, urban, metropolitan.

In the novels of character and environment, the characters are country people and the intellectuals. In these
novels, he explores his knowledge about rural life, he would teach how to plant a tree, how to kill a pig to how
to perform surgery on a sheep. he enjoyed introducing this type of information.
Main characters, were intellectual and belonged to the middle, upper class.
Hardy was the one deciding to describe his best novels as novels of characters. This is misleading, you get the
impression that the plot is not important, thinking that it is just the characters and environment. However, he
was a great storyteller. Novels of character and environment have in common that all are love stories, treating
different levels of seriousness, the problem of sex relationship inside and outside marriage. In the beginning,
the situations are very simple.

In Under the Greenwood tree, the heroine who is love by this honest country man but there is an outsider, not
coming from a rural community. He is clergyman who is also interested in the heroine. She is tempted by the
outsider’s preposition because of his position (better social class); It is a marriage preposition. At the end she
decides to marry the honest country man, partly because she doesn’t tell the whole truth about her relationship
with the clergyman. These happy endings have a sense of disillusion.

Far From the Madding Crow the situation becomes complicated. Three men aspire to have the hand of the
heroine; one of them is a shepherd, then you have an outsider, a soldier who doesn’t belong to the country-
side and the you have a farmer who is always repressing his feelings and emotions and when he releases them,
he is driven to obsession, insanity and crime. The story has a happy ending but there is a lot of suffering. The
heroine is impressed by the outsider’s social class. The heroine marries the honest countryman.

In the next novels, the complication about different types of love become more complex and human lives are
destroyed by blind passion or unwise marriage. This is obvious in The Return of the Native. There are plenty
of marriages but no one seems to marry the right person. You have infidelity, disappointment, frustration.
There are 2 people who are married, but decide to go away together, they don’t commit adultery. At the end,
there is not adultery. Hardy provides his readers with the conventional.

In The Woodlanders, he respects the happy ending. It is the honest countryman who dies, suffers but in this
one the heroine also loves the country man, but her father wants her to marry someone from a better social
class. She marriage the outsider, he is seduced by a widow and they go away together. The heroine becomes
aware of the values of the countryman and they hope divorce bring them back together because the husband
commits adultery. He comes back, the widow and country man. In the end of the novel, the widow (heroine)
and husband (outsider) come back together. It is no a happy plot. The countryman dies. She doesn’t get a
divorce and the heroine goes back to the man she married but doesn’t love.
Love is associated with disappointment and suffering. Something obvious in Tess. Tess is trapped between
two men (there is no countryman). Alec, he is the seducer and, in a sense, destroyed her life. And he says “I’m
the one who come to temp you”. He is the typical seducer of Victorian melodrama and popular ballads and
songs (stories), he has rolling eyes, he has a cigar between his teeth and he has a black moustache with curling
points. This is a typical description of seducer melodrama. Angel has an impeccable background, comes from
a religious family. He says he doesn’t care about conventions, but he cares and it’s obvious when he asks her
about her chastity. We expected a lot from Angel. Tess asks for his charity in the weeding night, ha fails.
Angel also contributes to Tess’s tragic fail.

• Angel=purity
• Alec=flesh

In Jude the Obscure Jude is trapped between two women, he is a young man and he is encouraged by his
school’s master, who was aware of his intellectual knowledge, to explore his intellectual power. He is trapped
into marriage by Arabella, who abandons him shortly after. Arabella threaten him to put him to a level of
animality but she abandons him, so he decided to move to a university town because he hopes to be admitted
one day to university. In this town, he meets his cousin Sue, she is an unconventional woman, she is sensitive
and she works selling ecclesiastical clothes. They meet and they fall in love, Sue who is not married, decides
to marry the school master. They live in the same house but they never have sexual relations because she
cannot stand him.

Sue and Jude decide to live together even though they are not married. They don’t have much money. They
are rejected by society. The relation deteriorates. Jude’s son decided to hang himself, as well as the two babies
that Jude and Sue had. He said that they were too many. Sue returns to her husband and Jude with Arabella, at
this moment he starts drinking.

Hardy’s approach to love changed a lot between the first novel, romantic vision of love, in the last, love is
associated with animality, frustration and disappointment. It is true that initially Jude was not meant to be
about Jude’s relationship but abut education in England and how brilliant people, from lower classes, couldn’t
go to university. He, then, decided to change the path of the novel. It was meant to be a criticism to the
English school system.

People believed that it had to do with the deterioration of his own marriage. In Jude there are references to the
possibility of divorce. At the time there was a great controversy about divorce.
TOPOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS

All these are love stories. They all have in common the topographical, historical, sociological element. But
Tess and Jude, their setting is very restricted and limited. It usually takes place in a village or a rural
community.
In Tess he introduces the man of Wessex. He usually puts a map of Wessex at the beginning of the novels to
satisfy the curiosity of his readers. He wanted readers to know how much reality there were in his novels, to
what extend Wessex, a fictional place, was based on real life, buildings and communities. He wants readers to
know that he had adapted the landscape freely. For his purposes as a writer. The setting is usually a rural
community. One of the characters in Tess says that he had to find a job 35 miles away and his partner tells him
that she will not see them again. She was right, they had to walk everywhere; distances were measure keeping
in mind men’s capacity to walk.

Life in this communities was control by the natural rhythms of nature. In Tess, Alec forces a strawberry
between Tess lips. Tess is asked by Alec is she likes strawberries, answering that she likes them “when they
come”. She means that she doesn’t like artificially produces element. They follow natures rhythms. Because
the setting is so restricted, like small villages, there are many incidental encounters in his novels. This is
important because it is an aspect that had been criticized. But obviously, the setting is restricted, you will
encounter someone you already know. The restricted setting justifies those many encounters.

He wasn’t the only one who introduced coincidental encounters in his novels, Dickens and Elliot also did it.
Novels were serialized, there must be a surprise and a secret in each part that is published, otherwise, the
readers won’t but the book. In order to keep the reader interested, the inhabitants of this small villages, they
don’t know anything about the world outside, but as compensation they gain enriching security and stability
from their association with the environment. Always living in the same place gives them a sense of security,
stability because they know, there are no surprises.

In Hardy’s novels people lived in this small villages over generations. Most of the painful scene must take
place when people are forced to abandoned their houses or their house are destroyed. One is when Tess goes
to the D’Urbervilles employed, and what was a cottage is transformed into a bird house. Tess’s family is
forced to abandoned the house. Alec gives her money, blackmailing Tess, so they could afford a place. There
are two examples in Tess in which people abandoned their houses. Hardy was an architect, not interested in
the beauty but the lives associate with the building. For him, buildings were documents telling the history or
stories of families.

Hardy distinguishes between the aesthetic and associative arouse by a building. There was more interest in the
“associative response” than the “aesthetic”. He distinguishes between the “beauty of aspect” and the “beauty
of association”. Being more interested in the beauty of association. Buildings tell the stories of a family. Lives
associated with the building. Buildings remind us of the fragility of human lives in contrast to the durability of
building. People die, buildings stay for generations.

Setting is rural community, very restrictive. In the case of Tess and Jude, connection between places and
people are destroyed, one of the saddest incidents take place is when people see their house destroyed. The
outsider really destroys the heroines’ lives. In the case of Tess, you have a varied world. We see Tess walking
from one place to another, wondering from one small village to another. In the case of Tess, one of the most
beautiful scenes takes place in the dairy. At the dairy everything is beautiful, everything grows… in Hardy’s
novels, the scenery represents the characters emotions and feelings. Tess is very happy when in the dairy
because she is with Angel, it doesn’t rain, there are flowers everywhere. When she leaves the dairy and goes
to the other village, she is sad, lonely because she has been separated from Angel, who has gone to Brazil.
The landscape reflects her feelings. She is sad, nothing grows there, it is very cold, the work is very hard.
Hardy also gives historical and sociological explanations why nothing grows there; the landlord of the villages
doesn’t care about the community/village.
Jude and Sue never have a home because they are orphans. They were succeeded in finding a home. In Tess,
she has a home at the beginning. In Jude like in Tess the emotions are repressed by the landscape.

SOCIOLOGICAL ELEMENTS IN THE NOVELS

Main characters are rural people. In all of them, the community is invaded by an outsider, upper class,
wealthy-man, who do not identify himself with the values of the community, who doesn’t live with the
rhythms of nature.
Alec tries to force a strawberry into Tess’s lips. Tess follows the rhythms of nature and Alec doesn’t follow
them.
These outsiders are always a threat to the stability of the community and the relation between inhabitants and
natural settings.

Hardy was fascinated by the work that rural people did with their hands. That’s why he is fascinated. Tess in
the dairy, how they make cheese, milk or treat the cows. When talking about sociological elements education
and the effects it had on the characters. Education is presented as an instrument of social change. Hardy was
very sure about the material benefits of education; that meant better work, better money. It was obvious in his
own life. He was born in a cottage and he became a famous writer living in a mansion with in and out
servants. His life was a success story because of his studies. The immaterial benefits of education, he was not
so sure about. In Tess and Jude, education seems to generate unhappiness, because Jude and Tess become
aware that there is a world out there and they are not happy with their lives; they have no access to this world.
Jude is a brilliant student, very intelligent, he moves hoping to enter university but he wasn’t admitted. He is
unhappy with his lost and fate. If he weren’t educated maybe he could have been happy; there is a world of
happiness that he cannot get.

Tess has been educated. She speaks two languages. Dialect and standard English. She speaks the dialect with
her family and standard English with they rest of the world. There is a gap between Tess and her mother
because of her education. Tess and Jude think there is a world of hope outside the village. Tess sees Angel at
the beginning of the novel, she is capable of appreciating the fact that Angel has an education. The other girls
like Angel because he is handsome and sweet, Tess likes him more because of that. Alec and Angel like her
because she is more educated than the others. In Hardy’s novels education brings unhappiness. In the case of
Jude is worse because he had been encouraged to pursuit that education.

HISTORICAL ELEMENTS

All his novels are set in a certain point in history. What is interesting in Hardy is his concept of Times. He
believes that human beings occupy an infinitesimal portion of the live of the universe. He implies that we
human beings do, think, and feel. What other people have done before. There is nothing original about his
novels. Our lives are in close relation to countless lives in the past. The facts that his settings have been
occupied since prehistoric times, intensifies this sense of the dead pressing upon living.
This is what is called this comic view of live and to a certain extend he was right. In Tess very often, the
narrator says it and Tess questions why.

The living is in contact with the dead. His characters confront problems that belong to the 19th century. In later
novels, the time of the action comes closer to the act of composition. In his early novels he is not interested in
recreating Victorian life but recreating his father’s youth. In his last novels the time of the action is recreating
contemporary Victorian life and society. In Tess, Tess goes with Alec to the railway station (Victorian) and is
confronted by it. in Tess people abandon the country to find better living. In the case of Angel, leaving to
Brazil (base on something that happened in 1872, a group of English people decided to emigrate to Brazil).
Based on a real-life experience, 10 years before writing Tess. In Jude, divorce is talked about, in England
things have changed and costumes have changed. Hardy describes the age of modernism, how costumes are
changing in the country; divorce is a topic of conflict at this time. The beginning of Tess, there is a club-
walking, it is a degraded version of the May-day dance. In Tess, he introduces the changes of rural costumes,
all these changes threatened the stability of the rural community. By the time he writes Tess, these changes are
giving an effect. Hardy gives us an account of the past and present of Wessex. In the 1st novels he talks about
his father’s youth and in his later novels he writes about the time of the composition of the novel.

OTHER ASPECTS

When comparing his novels, he wasn’t innovative, when it came to experimenting with form. He wasn’t
interested in experimenting with forms. He uses 3rd person narrator and he follows a chronological order (very
typical of this period). He was traditional and conservative; he was innovative in his pictorialism.
He emphasises the visual representation of experience; pictorialism. He was concerns with expressing with
words emotions that the visual world produces in him. Hardy had a great knowledge of European art of many
periods. He visited galleries in England and the continent and this knowledge is present in all his novels.
References to paintings and painter (basic way) of showing his knowledge. These references created a sense
of inferiority because the readers don’t know the painters and paintings. Often, he wanted to compensate for
the inadequacy of language to describe colour. There are many colors and shades without a name, he was
interested in the visual element, that is why he referred to paintings, he wanted readers to have that same
experience. At the more important level, Hardy’s knowledge is seen in his foreseen and his tendency of
grouping people and creating special affects of light and shadows, scale and perspective. He likes to place his
characters in windows, doorways, mirrors or walls. He like to frame them. Very often scenes are seen from a
hole on the wall, open door. When doing that, you create special effects of shadows. He is creating an effect of
perspective (Tess is compared to a fly; she seems very small, scale).
Objects, especially paintings in the Victorian age transmitted a lot of information. Costumes, buildings,
weather, time and place, dresses and tools, painters tell and give information in a painting about social class
and about the world. A painter can also give information about facial expressions, postures, gestures. A painter
gives a lot of information about paintings. In the Victorian period paintings are interpreted. In Hardy’s novels
he “shows” an object and he wants the reader to draw his own conclusions from the object. In a sense, the
narrator created by hardy do the same thing, they have to interpreted the signs given by Hardy. The narrator
often also interprets the signs.

HARDY’S PHYLOSOPHY

What he tells us, his ideas, about human life and behaviors. There is no agreement about critics.
Hardy’s novels do not instruct you into happiness/cheerful effect. We seem to inhabit a world that specializes
by calamities, tragedies, misfortunes. Things go wrong at an alarming rate. It is true that Hardy was a
depressive. He was a very sensitive man who was vulnerable, towards the disappointing circumstances of the
Victorian age. He even said that the ignorants, without knowledge about scientific discovery or the real world,
are the happiest people, that the ones who follow society are more depressed. Some people have said that he is
a fatalist. Everything is determined, there is a system of things that controls human lives without taking into
consideration human wishes. Some critics have rejected these ideas of fatalism. For Hardy there is no system
controlling life, the universe is neutral and there is no divine providence. If the universe is neutral, there is
only chance. If in his novels there is only chance, it seems to be malign intelligence, there is more pain than
happiness. This is why some critics have said that he was a morbid writer. It is there that in his novels,
coincidence intensifies the pain or the suffering of the world, people specially; he would focus on the pain of
the good characters. Tess took the wrong train, went to the wrong house. Hardy believed that he had a rosy
view of our lives. Because we are ourselves, live is going to be better than for the rest of people who are in the
same circumstances (he wanted to make the readers aware of how that was, even unrealistic. Hardy called
himself an evolutionary meliorist. He believed, always rejecting this fatalism, that the providence cannot help
us because it doesn’t exit but we can help ourselves. If we are alert and be able to adapt ourselves to raw
circumstances. He believed that disaster, pain, tragedy can be avoided. It is unnecessary. Many people said
that he was a pessimistic. He wanted to tell the truth in order to improve the world (he believed that life would
change fo the better that positivism was found in cowarly and sincerity). He thought that wars are going to
disappear (him not being pessimistic).

He always tried to look of those occasions of possibility that can allowed us to succeed. He doesn’t believe
that we are helpless in the hands of faith. He doesn’t believe in faith. He says that we are helpless because
were put ourselves by foolish and irresponsible actions. He said the worst because he believed in the best.
Chinks of possibilities was a term used go those occasions. It is true that Hardy’s novels give the impression
that something could have been done to prevent the disaster. People make the wrong choice or not making
choices at all, which is even worse. When reading the novels by Hardy, the impression is that even if making
the right choices nothing would have changed, even if you adapt yourself to new situations, you are still
suffering, going through tragedy, even making the right choices could end with nothing happening.
Other critics have said that he has a dark vision of life, because he was worried about the decay of the old
agricultural order. It is true that he was aware of it. that things and costumes were changing and getting lost.
Agricultural working life conditions were improving. In one of his books, he describes how agricultural
working-class lives were improving. A (), a pioneer was “seen”. Many people had to abandon the country. He
praised the way in which they were capable of leaving everything behind to find a job. He acknowledged that
there were good things in the changes. He was always in the side of changes. Because he was on the side of
change, he welcomed them.

Thomas Hardy was influenced by the paganism and paularims of the Old English ballads but his stories do not
belong in it. The logic of the tradition story differs from modern fictions, the nearly miraculous is what makes
a story in the old way. On the old ballads/folk tales there must be something strange, unpredictable, magical,
unravel. The world of Hardy is not that of the old ballads; devils, demons, fairies, mermaids, ghosts,
witches… His works belongs to the later ballads and folktales. In his novels superstitious (the miraculous) is
replaced by coincidence. Superstition is the background, and coincidence is the fore ground.
In Tess, he makes reference to the superstitious but they are background. You never see the dragons; Tess
doesn’t belong to this world of ballad.

The influence of ballads and folktales is fixed or changeless characters; he created changes of these
characters; experiences may change the fortune of the characters but not themselves. Very often critics like
changing characters, not Hardy.

Changeless were equal to changing characters. In his novels you can find changeless and changing characters.
The changeless characters are the rural people, those who live according to the rhythms of nature. Tess learns
a lot about life but she doesn’t change, the changing characters in the novel are Angel and Alec
Tess is associated with nature, she is not a religious person; she worships nature, she is what is called a pagan.
Most obvious at the end of the novels, she goes to the Stonehenge, where ancient people used to worship the
sun and dies on top of it. Because of this association with nature, there are reference to flora and fauna.
Although she is associated to nature, nature seems to be indifference about Tess. It doesn’t care about her
faith/ life because Hardy didn’t have the view of the romantics, who believed that nature was relevant. Hardy
didn’t have the view of the romantics.
Angel is saying he doesn’t care about social or religious doctrines. He always says he is leaving for a girl from
nature but this is not true, every time he talks to Tess, he uses her second name, caring about her origin.

Hardy makes clear that Tess is seduced not raped. Tess is a passionate woman; she is following her heart and
she stays with him. She admits that she was blinded by his passion, that she thought he was caring for her.
Alec is also a passionate man; animalism. He is a man who follows his passion, he is aware of the
consequences of sleeping with Tess, but he doesn’t care. Her mother doesn’t tell Tess the consequences either,
hoping that Tess would become his mistress. Alec contributes to Tess’ destruction but it is actually society the
one that destroys her. Society doesn’t forgive her for loosing her chastity. Alec is more generous to Tess’
family than angel. There is nothing to be expected from Alec; he is described as a villain and acts like such but
he is generous for a while; when Tess’ mother dies, he wants to marry her, he is aware of what he has done.
He gives them money when they had to leave the house, etc.

From Angel, we expected a lot, he comes from a religious family but he is uncapable of forgiving Tess, or
showing compassion towards her when Tess asks for his “forgiveness”. When Angel confesses that he is not
pure and he confesses back the same, he doesn’t forgive her, so the reader is let down.
Alec sacrifices Tess lust and Angel sacrifices her to his theory of womanly purity; once she tells him she is not
chaste, everything ends.

Alec cannot control himself. He becomes a priest but upon seeing Tess, he is lost. Angel is safe from total
condemnation from the reader because he suffers a lot when he goes to Brazil, he learns to take into account
why people do things, so he forgives Tess. At the end of the novel, Tess becomes aware that he hasn’t
changed, and is relieved that the police have come for her.

The subtitle of the novel is Tess of the D’Urbervilles; a Pure Woman. However, she goes back to Alec, and she
is aware that she is committing adultery. The reasons are monetary and Hardy was interested in the power of
heredity, in the effects on your personality. After, she kills Alec. At the end of the novel, she explains that she
has lived extreme circumstances. Her family needs the money and her husband doesn’t come back.
Hardy was interested in the way people are conditioned and limited by the environment. after she kills Alec,
Angel proposes Tess to go somewhere but she refuses, saying that he wouldn’t be happy, because he would
have thrown her faith to her face (killing, sleeping with Alec), because of their personality, Angle is a sensitive
man, and Tess knows him very well, she sees through Angel and is aware of it The murder that Tess commits,
is the effect of heredity (murderer in the family tree), he only way to find redemption is to kill herself. Tess
has this tendency to murder because of force of heredity and environment.
She is destroyed by social conventions, economic forces, only society cause her fall.
 MODERNISM

Modernism appeared in New England at the end of the 19th century. The age of Oscar Wilde, W.B Yeats,
Joseph Conrad, Henry James. In the first half of the 20st century, there a reaction against this avant-garde and
back to a return to a more realistic fiction with the work of Arnold Bennett.
In 1914 this situation is about to change for 2 main reasons:

• The first one, was that Ezra pound decided to make London the centre of a new avant-garde,
he starts promoting the works of James Joyce and T.S Elliot.
• There weas another reason; WWI. At the beginning it seemed that the WWI was going to
destroy Ezra Pound’s plan. During war people are no interested in art matters, and many
writers decide to join the military to fight alongside with England. The interesting thing is that
the war created a climax, receptive to artistic revolution, radio, news... It was more brutal than
any other war before, people were shocked by what happened over, and realized that the
values of society had led to such a war, therefore a change was needed. There was thirst for
change That is why it was needed (the artistic reception).

Most modernist novels appeared during the 20s. T.S Eliot thought the world was a waste land; The waste land
1922. Modernist fiction tends to be experimental in form, concerned with consciousness and unconsciousness/
subconscious working of the human mind. This is because they are a great influence by the development of
the human knowledge; specially of the field of psychology. Sigmund Freud’s (the most relevant) discoveries
shared a connection with history a literature. He proposed that there is always really close relationship
between history and literature. The external objective event is not so important and more room is given to
introspection.

When reading a modernist novel, the reader has to familiarized himself with the stream of consciousness of
the characters, what is important is what goes on the mind of the characters. Modernist writers tend to rewrite
archetypes, an example is A portrait of the Artis as a Young Man by James Joyce. The main character Stephen
Dedalus. He believes that he is Dedalus. Joyce plays with the myth Dedalus. The myth of Icarus and Dedalus.
Dedalus is a great artist but he is charged with murder being forces to escape the island. he gathers feathers
and make 4 wings, 2 for himself and 2 for his son. He realized that the only way to escape is by flying. He
uses wax. He warned his son Icarus not to fly to close to the sun because the wax melts but Icarus flew too
close to the sun and he died. Stephen believes that because his surname is Dedalus he is a great artist but he
learns at the end of the novel that he is Icarus, that he has a lot to learned still.

Ulysses 1922 by James Joyce. What is interesting about hit novel is that it is a rewriting of the Odyssey by
Homer. The 3 main characters of the novel represent the three main characters of the Odyssey.

Modernist try to avoid straight chronological order. In the realistic novel time is conceived as a succession of
moment in a relationship of cause-effect. Modernist believe that time is duration “something that flows in an
invisible continuous”. In modernist novels, there are many flashbacks, it swings mainly because we follow the
thought of the characters, so we go back and forth in time and put effort in understanding; At the beginning of
A portrait of the Artis as a Young Man, we follow Stephen’s thoughts, at one moment we are in the
playground, the following he is out the present moment.

In a realistic novel they follow chronological orders? it always moves forward because they have different
concepts of time, they also have different plots. The way you decide to tell a story from the point of view of a
single or multiple characters. A modernist writer may decide to follow a chronological order or destroy it, he
may decide to emphasize certain aspects or others; these are the choice a character had to make, the way in
which the writer decides to tell a story is what turn in into a plot. Modernist writers create a plot, not a story of
resolutions. What they create instead is a plot of revelation. In a modernist novel what happens next is not so
important. The reader is not interested in the resolution, the readers don’t ask themselves what is going to
happen next and how it is going to end. They wanted the truth to be revealed. The modernists writer uses
different points of view, singular, multiple, all of them or fallible. While in a realist novel you have an
omniscient narrator; they know everything. That is typical of modernist novels. One of the reasons why this
wasn’t is because no-one knows everything. Modernist novels had no real beginning and they usually have an
open ending.

Henry James rejected the close endings. Modernist writers thought that they were more realistic than realistic
novelists.

He rejected the idea of art as imitation and defended that art was an autonomous activity. The main principle
of aesthetic before modernism was that art imitated life or that art must tell the truth about life. Romantic
writers rejected this idea first but during the 19th century this idea was reinforced; Modernist writers rejected
the idea of life as an imitation, Oscar Wilde said that life imitated art. He meant that “we conceive reality
through certain mental structures that are cultural and not natural” and “art is most likely to change the
mental structures when they become inadequate”. Art comes from art, especially from the same kind, poems
are made out of other proem and novels out of novels… it is an autonomous activity.
Hardy analysis life, talks about the prejudice of women (in Tess). Readers and society despise Tess because of
the mental and cultural, no natural structures.
 THE 30s

In the 20s the main trend was modernism, in the 30s there is a return to realism. The best way to remember the
tendencies of the 20th century is to think of a pendulum.
The public attacked the obscurity/elitism of the modernist writers, because, modernist novels were very
difficult to understand and they believed that modernist writers only write for an elite; these novels could only
be understood by a minority, people with very high education, because of this, they called for a more
politically aware and more communicative approach to writing. Writers should be more politically aware and
more communicative.

The main writers W.H. Auden; he was the most famous poet of the generation. W.H. Auden. Christopher
Isherwood, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day Lewis, Edward Upward, George Orwell. All of the
them but Orwell were Marxist at the beginning. Orwell first defined himself as an anarchist and later as a
socialist.

Virginia Woolf understood the change, although she was modernist. She is asking why writers were more
cornice with political ideas rather than novels by themselves. During the 30s it was impossible to ignore
politics. (Quotation) as an example, in Russia they killed the royal family and stablished communism or in
Spain you have the civil war.

The collapse of the Wall-Street of the stock market in 1929 helps create an economic depression that also
affected British life. The pound was devalued, unemployment reached such a scale that there were hunger
marches and demonstrations/riots… there was a huge recession. It was this economic depression that allowed
Hitler to seize revolution, not to Mussolini since he had been in power since 1922. It also helped Russia
become a communist country. British were very concern with Spanish civil war, they saw a conflict between
the left and the right, that would lead to a second WW. The writers of the 30s were trapped between the WWI
and WWII and they were deeply affected by the circumstances of the time, there is always a really close
relationship between history and literature that tightens in times of crisis. Writers in the 20s thought that they
should change the way they write because the previous morals had let to a brutal war. The 30s was a political,
economical and social crisis. Writers reacted to this. They came for the upper class, they belonged to public
schools and Cambridge and Oxford. No writing of literary importance came out of the working class; because
they didn’t have time, most of the times they only had margarine and bread, they didn’t have money to buy
anything else, many were unemployed, life was really hard for them, they struggled to survive and they were
not in the mood to write anything. They expressed their needs, emotions, feelings in other ways; hunger
marches, protest, demonstrations…

The decay of the 30s was a decay of crisis and writers of the 30s try to respond to this crisis.
In the next quotation, Auden tries to a make us aware of the facts that action was urgent, if we want to resist
disaster /fear. The role of writers was to make men aware of the need of action. Writers tells readers that
something had to change, they are not telling what they have to think like propagandas do. Facts like this
makes clear that they are not concerned with aesthetic emotion but by ideas. Poetry can never be propagandist
or impose values and ideas; they can never tell what they have to believe in or what to do. Poetry should only
tell the differences between good and evil, and teach and make aware for the necessity for action. Art is art but
it preforms a social role.
Most writers, of the 30s were born in the 1st decade of the 20th century and they share 2 catastrophic historical
experiences:

• 1st world war

• The economic and political events of the 30s; the great depression, unemployment.
Writers were very young when WWI started, they were deeply affected by it. WWI was more brutal and
mechanical (new weapons) than any other one. People were shocked at everything that was going around.
Boys leaned to drill, march, they were preparing for the army and girls leaned bandage, just in case they had
to be nurses and help soldiers.

For boys there were a great consolation, they were training for the glory of the trenches and they were happy
with that. It was the last war in which the values of the establishment and the idea of the public-school
tradition seemed transferable to the battle field. These values were courage, self-sacrifice, honor and duty.
They really believed that the values of school could be transferred. They trained and they were proud of it.
The war was over and they were disappointed because they could not become heroes. There was a reaction
against the eldest because they believed they were responsible for the war.

In Orwell’s quotation is a poem the was written when he was 14 or 15 years old, saying that you have to fight
and if don’t, you are a coward. However, the war ended and nobody could participate, so they were upset
because they didn’t become heroes. It is a reaction against the eldest because they thought the eldest were the
responsible one for the war.

The Road to Wigan Pier, it is a road to nowhere. In northern England people went to blackboard but some
didn’t ever go, they had no money; they say they go to wigan pier, there is no pier in Wigan. Orwell is
expressing what his generation felt after WWI. He belonged to the upper-class, but he wanted to be on the side
of the oppressed, so he lived among beggars. He went to northern England to write a documentary. He
believed lower-class people had a strength, so he could never be part of them.

He decided to become a socialist. He was a very honest man. He would change his values if they were wrong.
He was a man of honor; he rejected the values of the old men. These young people had contradictory feelings
about the war. On the one hand they were disgusted by its brutality; they felt guilty because they couldn’t
participate, and they envied those who participated in it.

The need for change was seen even in literature. Writer and most people in the 30s felt that they were trapped
between wars. They were aware of this fact. By 1928, British people stopped thinking about themselves as a
post-war generation and started thinking of themselves as a pre-war generation, they wanted to stop the
WWII, they thought that they could change history through their poems. They, of course, failed.
They were aware of the pressure of history upon their lives. They knew that they were writing in a time of
crisis and they were all the time asking themselves about the role of the poet. They asked themselves if
writing was enough, if they had to do something else, they felt this sense of otherness.

Christopher Isherwood’s Lions and shadows show these contradictory feelings and they rejected the values
of the old men. Many people died in the war. The next one is by Orwell and he supports this idea.
Vile bodies by Evelyn Waugh, says that nobody wants war, the reasons why nobody talks about it. instability
in Europe would lead to another war and they knew it. they made the readers know that another war was about
to begin and were aware of the pressure of history.

1936 the Spanish civil war started, the conflict between left and right predicted many years before becoming
true. The literary response in Britain was immediate, poets, playwright, novelist started writing about the war,
there was more writing in England about the Spanish civil war, while it was going on than in the WWII. The
war ends in November, there was a play title Spain.

As the war went on, they really thought that it was a cause that they were fighting for. This vision of the
Spanish civil war was that of a left crusade. It was not a matter of switching or changing loyalty, British
writers were socialist. It was more a matter of seeing the war on more realistic terms, the Russians, in the
republican side were moving to a position of power because Russia was the only country sending weapons to
the republican side. Writers were aware that many of the ideas of the civil war were betrayed, they always
supported the republicans.

George Orwell came to Spain as a journalist, initially. As soon as he arrived in Spain, he decided to join the
party P.O.U.M and fight in the war. He spent 6 months in Aragon fighting against Franco, but a bullet pierced
his throat and he went back to Barcelona, he survived. Once in Barcelona he realized that everything had
changed. The political elite had replaced the social elite, it was a new one, represented by the Russians. It was
a political elite. The Russian betrayed the morals of the civil war, they slander and physically exterminated
people, that was the way they ensure power. POUM was considered as a threat, they were trying to get ride of
it by the Russians. They killed many members of the party because of their political ideas, George Orwell had
to pact in order to save his life. He knew what he was writing about. The Russians went as far as to say that
POUM was pacting with Franco. They tried to get rid of them.

George Orwell learned about totalitarian methods by the Russians. the Russians in Spain used brutal police
methods that he witnesses. George Orwell decided to write a book/documentary called Homage to Catalonia.
(Animal farm was based on this); where he described the situation.
Saying he belongs of the left, that he did not support Franco. They were aware of the fact that they ().
Many British writers came as journalist but later joined the war. Auden came to work as an ambulance driver.
British writers saw the ugliness of the war but still deemed it worth fighting for. The Spanish civil war has a
special meaning to them, to enter the war was to take the test their brother and fathers had passes after WWI.
The 30s writers were disappointed that they couldn’t participate in it and that it had ended. They felt guilty
and ashamed. For the 1st time the choice between art and action, became clear. They knew exactly what they
had to do. They knew that what they had to do was to come to Spain to participate in the civil-war. The war
allowed them to see the dark between the beautiful. Words such as freedom, courage, hero, revolution but also
the reality of blood during death is what they became aware of. Once you participate in the war, you see
everything. John Cornford, a letter form Aragon, is a realistic poem talking about how dead bodies stink. His
burial was not that memorable. At the end he gives the speech about oppression and anarchy “death was not
dignified”.

By 1937 there is a retreat from political commitment.

1. British writers are aware of the succeed of fascism in Europe and discovered how communism
really worked
2. They became aware of how difficult it was to be communist and an artist at the same time.
3. Time was passing; all these artists/writers that were sentimental communist when young, were
now, adult that were married, had children. So, life had changes for them. Time had passed, there
is no space for the sentimental guys they used to be.
4. There were no longer this sentimental communist, their personal lived had changed. The growing
fascism in Spain help to change this. Now there were people with responsibilities.

1939 was a period of waiting for the end but also a period of endings. The Spanish civil war ended this year,
Czechoslovakia ended. in 1939 when the German army invaded Poland and faith in the Soviet Union also
ended when Russia signs a pact with Germany and Hitler. In the English literary world, it was also a time of
endings. Many literary journals stopped publications, some of these journalists were left wing, others were
right wing. But the majority stopped publications. The period between war was coming to an end. It was a
time of ending but not a time of focusing on the present. They decided to look backwards, towards nostalgia
and forward to apocalypses. By doing so, they were no trying to escape from the present, they were preparing
themselves for what was coming. They believed that if you analyze the past, you must find something worth
saving and if you imagine the future, you might be able to survive.
George Orwell’s Coming Up for Air is written in the 1st person and the main characters decide to go back to
his childhood village and the whole journey is a disappointment because everything has changed for worse.
His childhood home has been transformed into a tea-shop. The pond has been drained. Where he used to fish,
there are now empty cans. Everything has changed. They are concerned about what happened, in the 30s and
two of the most relevant writers, Auden and Woods, decided to go to the USA, Yeats also died this yea Auden
abandoned the idea that poetry can change history.
Then WWII started and poets were shocked, depressed and disappointed. There was a lack of motivation, with
the best example of Stephen Spender, with September Journal reflected that people expected them to write
about war, but they couldn’t contribute or support it. George Orwell wanted to go but his lungs were very
weak.
 1940s-1950s

Return to a more modernist experimental kind of writing, more present in poetry. Dylan Thomas was the
greatest poet of this time. In the 1950s the realism was stablished, although it is not the only movement; there
was also the movement of the “Angry Young Men”, who criticizes poetry. It was against modernism and any
kind of experimentalism, they hated Dylan Thomas because of his excessive use of metaphors, romanticism
and verbal obscurity. They wanted to share clearly and honestly their perception of the world, which was a
technical point of view, very innovative. Originality was mainly a matter, and they tried to find it in tone,
attitude and subject of matter, reflecting the change in English society after WWII, mainly meritocratic.
Philip Larkin was one of the main writers of this generation. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis was the first
novel where university was criticized.

Most of the writers of the 30s were from lower-middle class and became professors at the Redbrick
University, something unthinkable years before. The Education Act in 1944 made secondary education free
in England, and in 1948, the Welfare State was inaugurated in England, giving free national healthcare for
everyone (reasons for the rise of meritocracy). Writers went to Cambridge and Oxford with grants.
Authors who started writing realistic novels in the 50s moved to experimentalism in the 60s, although there
were others experimental from the beginning.

Angus Wilson in the 50s praised for his satirical analysis of Anglo-Saxon attitude and moral energy of his
novels. In 1967 he published Not Laughing Matter, a panoramic novel of class, history, and family
(experimental). He parodies and imitates the discourses of other writers, and their styles.
One of the bests writers in the 50s was Doris Lessing. Published The Golden Notebook, an experimental
novel describing life in northern England, and with the 60s marking a psychological meaning.
Irish Murdoc with Under the Net is an angry young man prologue. Characters are very angry with society in
it.
Anthony Burgess with A Clockwork Orange left the relative realistic novels and started with
experimentalism.
Muriel Spark with The Comforters. He was experimental since the beginning. He added elements of
metafiction (fiction about fiction). His novel stablishes an analogy between God and demons, and one of the
characters objects the author inside the novel.
 FROM REALISM TO POST-MODERNISM (1960s-1970s)

Interest for experimentalism is emphasised at this time. The main tendency was post-modernism, with a great
influence of literary critics. FW. Lewis and Ian Watt. In the 50s they were very concerned with moral values.
Those critics were concerned with form, structure and narrator. Wayne Booth with his book the rhetoric of
fiction analyses the different kinds of narrators. David lodge was one of the best writers and criticizes the
dangers of narratives. Frank Kermode with the sense of an ending.
Port modernist adopted many forms and tendencies in England. David lodge says that post modernism can be
compared to that of a man standing on a cross-walk. The road in which the realists’ novels stands was the
main trend in the 50s.

In the 60s enthusiasm towards the realistic novel is disappearing because of 2 reasons:
• Social novelty is fading way; disappearing. What the writers of the 50s reflected the changes
in English society after the WWII. There were many changes in society in the 50s.
• The literary theory behind this movement, the angry young man, was very thin. Realistic
novels continued being written but they are just a minority.

Barbara Pym was very popular in the 50s but in the 60s nobody wanted to publish he novels because they
were realistic, it shows how experimentalism was the main trend in the 60s and 70s. The aesthetic conventions
of realism were being question and they decided to take one of the two routes that branch in opposite direction
of the cross-walk. Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg’s The Nature of Narrative in this book they said that
there are two modes of narrative; the empirical and the fictional. The empirical is loyal to the real and the
Fictional is loyal to the ideal. The empirical subdivided into historical, which is true to facts and mimesis,
which is true to experience; History tries to represent facts of history and mimesis tries to imitate true
experiences. The fictional narrative subdivided into romance, which cultivates beauty and aids to life and
allegory, which cultivates goodness and aims to teach. According to () the realistic novel is the synthesis of
empirical and fictional narratives. Tess is realistic, you find mimesis (imitation), romance, history, allegory…
but the realistic novels is questioned this synthesis is about the be exploited. It you exploit only the fictional
you get fabulation, that is a more verbal, artistic, fiction and less realistic kind of fiction; it is more concerned
with ideals than ideas. The fabulator doesn’t mind destroying the illusion of life, you have more freedom to
manipulate the material. they don’t mind that what you are reading is a fictional novel. Fabulation tends to
draw inspiration form 3 types of subliterature; science fiction, pornography, the thriller. What this writer do is
used true convection of science fiction to write experimental novels. J.G Ballard uses the conventions of
science fiction to write experimental novels. John Fowles’ Mantissa 1982 is a novel that becomes a metaphor
of contemporary fiction. At first it may see pornography. D.M. Thomas uses science fiction and Kingsley
Amis’ Colonel Sun and Anthony Burgess’ Tremor of intent 1966(is a parody pf the thriller); use thriller.
Everything is exaggerated.

Inside fabulation, the gothic romance is introduced. They use the topics and styles of the end of the 18th and
beginning of the 19th century gothic novels to write experimental novels.
 DAVID LODGE

David Lodges’ work is a good example of this trend of realism and towards novel of experimentalism. Like
many writers he started of in realism and moved towards experimentalism. He is being a compromise between
realism and experimentalism. He tries to avoid or conceal opposite positions. Although his works became
increasingly experimental, he never relinquished those aspects that he considered important committing to the
creation of characters, moral values, story- telling. He says he writers layered fiction; his fiction has different
layers. Enjoyed by Academics/Educated people, who are ware of the experimental games of his novels but
they are also enjoyed by other readers that like it on a surface level; these readers enjoy the plot, stories,
characters. David Lodge was one of the most important literary critics in England, as a critic he is a
compromiser. He modified his initial critical approach, making it more structuralist but only assimilating those
aspect of structuralism which he considered could improve the model of critical practice to which he
belonged. Anglo-American empiricism and liberal humanism are the models to which he belonged.

David Lodge has rejected or attacked all the aspects of post structuralism that only contribute to destroy the
tradition. Post-structuralism defended that language cannot represent the world truthfully and they rejected the
idea of the author as the origin and composer of a text. They also rejected the mimetic function of language.
Realistic writers believe that language can represent the world truthfully, post-structuralism rejects this and
David Lodge doesn’t agree with it. Changing Places is an example of this, it is an exaggeration but represents
reality. Post structuralism denies that.

Salan Bartles’ The death of the Author, have the author reject the idea that the author is the origin of the text.
The only power the author has is to mix different writings taken from different cultures. A novel, a text, is just
made of multiple writing taken form different meaning in the text, they said that readers are the ones that
produce meaning in a text. They rejected the idea of the author, but at the same time people were more and
more interested in authors as human being. It doesn’t answer to David Lodge’s own experience of writing a
novel, a writer is all the time making choices and decisions even writing a novel. They decided what type of
hero they want or the point of view, not the reader. David Lodge says that writing a novel is really hard. He
also says that people are interested in authors as human beings; living, breathing human beings. This doesn’t
mean that reading is passive, on the contrary, it is active. Very often the readers may find meanings that
writers may not be aware off. Very often there are gaps in the text that readers fill. But it is one thing to say
that readers pointed out meaning and that they actively read, then to say that the reader is the one producing
meaning.

Post-surrealism rejects the humanist idea of the unique, autonomous individual. It says that the individual
doesn’t exist and lodge believed they changed but without existing. David lodge agree that individuals
change.

Literature expresses what is inside the minds and hearts of fictional characters and Lodge believed that
characters are the most important element in the novel, when we read a novel we receive knowledge.
Angela Carte’s The Infernal Machines of Doctor Hiffman and The Bloody Chamber. She rewrites famous
tales. The Red Riding Hood.

Ian McEwan’s First Love and Last Rites; collection of short stories. Gothic trends to experimental novels.
The non-fiction has always been more popular in USA than in England. Truman Capotes’ In Cold Blood,
about a real multiple murder in 1969, everything is true to facts, is not fictional. He even interviewed the
murdered in prison but nevertheless is novels because he exploits the aesthetic possibilities of the text. It is not
a documentary but a non-fictional novel. For some writers these two options are too radical and they hesitate
in the cross walk and they decided to introduce their doubt and hesitation into the novel what you get is what
David Lodge terms the problematic novel or metafiction, the writer want to share the aesthetic and
philosophical problems that writing fiction presents. David lodge does that in Changing Places is the 1st
metafictional writer in the 18th century is Tristan Shardy, the narrator tells you everything about his family, the
narrator shares the problems he has with sharing everything about his novel. The narrator tells you everything
about his family.
The metafictional writer retained the loyalty to both reality a and fiction but lacks the possibility of the realist
novels to reconcile both reality and fiction.
 1980s

In the 80s most people thought that the experimental novel would disappear but it was used by many writers.
Fabulation contains magic realism, and the best example is Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verse the best example
of magic realism. In the 80s the non-fictional novel was more popular in the USA but there was a renaissance
of literary travel writing, which can be included in the non-fiction novel. The best example of writer are
James Fenton, Jonathan Raban and Bruce Chatwin, they report facts, the make cultural and philosophical
comments and also that they are always teasing autobiographical element; the writers write at themselves. In
the 80s, the word “crossover” is used by David Lodge, it is a metaphor that describes much better the situation
of the novelist in the 80s. Very few novelists are committed to only one subgenre combining one or more of
these modes with realism; they use the metaphor.

Most writers combine them, which makes it a crossover. In the 80s, intertextuality becomes relevant, rewriting
of old texts; John Fowles with The French Lieutenant’s is describing a Victorian novel in the 20th century. It
is a dialogue between two texts; the one you are writing and another one, that recreated characters of medieval
romances. Small world is a novel that takes place in the 70s but it is about people/academics… going to one
place or the other. David Lodge recreated the situation/characters of the medieval and renaissance romances
and their characters. David lodge believes that characters are the most important element in the novel.

David lodge’s novels are based on his own experiences and the environment he knows best but his novels are
not autobiographical. Low-middle class catholic family life in the London suburb. He spent his childhoods in
war England and his adolescent in pot-war England. In his novels, he describes life as a graduate student,
married live (he is married with 3 children) and as an English professor. Life changes inside the catholic
churches after the WWII, mainly in his novels. He is concern with the attitude of the individual catholic
towards official church teaching concerning sex and birth control. In England, Catholics are a minority and
are very strict about these things.

David lodge started writing in the 50s and he was influences by the realistic writers of the 50s. he has
described his 1st novels as an “essentially serious works of scrupulous realism”.
Out of the Shelter was the 4th to be published but it was conceiver earlier.

The picturegoers 1960 is an immature work. It was his 1st but the published recommended against its
publication. He is embarrassed about it but it showed his promising future as a novelist. His alteration of
diction tone and rhythm as it changes from the description of the inner thought of one character to the inner
thought of another is really impressive. Lodge believes that characters are allowed to speak for themselves
and the less they are explained by the narrator the stronger will be our sense of the individuals’ freedom and
the stronger will be our freedom of interpretation. When the narrator explains everything, you have the
impression that they narrator is telling you what to think about the characters. If the characters revel
themselves, you have the impression that they have freedom to show themselves as they are. It follows the
fortune of several characters that attend the same church or/and cinema, it is about a young man that loses his
faith. This was the first novel he wrote but the published recommended against its publication.

How Far Can You Go? Talks bout a young man who looses his faith and recovers it and how the Catholics
fought against sins and how this loss of faith produces disorientation.
Ginger, you are Barny, criticizes military national service for its futility, dehumanization and lack of
individual freedom.
When the novel was published, it was associate to the “angry young man” and the movement because he
criticizes the institutions but he has always rejected this.
Lodge believes that there is anger in the young man of the novel because he finds his progress interrupted for
2 years for national service with an institution with which he cannot identify himself.

Lodge was force with compulsory enlistment and found his progress in university interrupted. There is anger
in the young man because his possibilities are interrupted for 2 years. He delayed writing the novel in order to
control his anger. That is important because both books were criticized by society, he just wanted to reflect his
own experiences. He doesn’t identity himself with the “angry young man”. He didn’t want to denounce and
condemn the institution. He thanked the author of the movement but he doesn’t want to be associated to them.
He recognises the ethical and aesthetical limitations of the movement and he felt in debt with them because
they made possible for people like him, with no privilege background and no influential friends to become
writers. The writers in the 30s are all from the upper class. Most people who became professors taught in the
redbrick universities.

Out of the shelters is published in the 70s and follows the convention of the Bildungsroman; a German term
used to talk about the process from adolescent to maturity and the recognition of what one wants to be and the
international novel in conflicting ethical and cultural codes. It is about a young man that goes to Germany. It
is an international novel because the narrator gets in contacts with German and American cultures. History of
different angles. He achieves maturity and realized what he wants to be; a writer. This is based on David
Lodge’s own experience but it is fiction.

The idea that he allures, is that the English are the good ones and the German are the bad ones.
The third novel he published was the British Museum is Falling Down, it is his first experimental novel. He
admitted that comedy liberated him. It allowed him to write his 1 experimental novel and offered him a way
of reconciling a contradiction of which he was aware between his own critical admiration for modernist
writers and his own. Creative writing was mainly realistic.

David lodge was catholic in 1926 Pope John XXIII called for a rapid second Vatican council to reinterpreted
the catholic faith to the modernist world and in the same year he held a commission to study problems
concern wit family population and birth control. Pope Paul VI succeed him in the following year and he
charge the commition with the takes of examining the church’s valuable hygienic cultural function. By the
time, Lodge wrote the novel, many Catholics were optimistic with the churches teaching, concerning birth
control and that they would be able to use the pill?

The novel has a happy ending. The only method they could use is what they called the safe method.
The novel is about Adam, a man in his 20s, he is poor, he is married, he is catholic and the novel starts when
his wife tells hi that she is pregnant again, it would be their fourth. He is anxious, he only has a grant for his
research. he gets anxious during the day (obsessed over this idea) and he has daydreams, fantasies and
illuminations. Every time he has a daydream, most (because the are other type of writers) modernist writers
are paroid. This is why the element of experimentalism is present through the use of parody and pastiche.
Lodge give voice to the author that is being paroid. He may refer to the title or refers to the author. He gives
the readers clues for them to realize.

David Lodge introduces parody and pastiche in a natural way. He is compromised with realism and fiction.
After the novel was published, Lodge had to explain why The British Museum is Falling Down is an
experimental novel, because nobody realized it. The happy ending is that she is not pregnant.
The whole novel is narrated from the point of view of Adam, with the exception of the epilogue. Lodge
wanted readers to have Barbara’s point of view. That is why the last chapter is a monologue by Barbara. Here
David Lodge parodies the end of Ulysses. At the end of Ulysses, you have Molly’s point of view, it ends in the
same way that Ulysses does.

This novel is very important, it is his first campus novel, where he agrees with Bakhtin. The Russian critic,
that believes that comedy fulfils a valuable, hygienic cultural function, which means that institutions are
subject to ridiculing criticism, and he has always criticized, satirized and questioned the profession he
belonged for a long time. He believed it was good for institutions and didn’t want to destroy them but he
wants to destroy this ideals idea of academics. The British Museum is Falling Down revealing a new concern
with experimentalism that he developed in his later novels. His campus trilogy Changing Places, How Far Can
You Go? and Small World. Experimentalism is mainly to the use of metafiction.

How far can you go? talks about the changes the catholic church suffered after WWII and the person is asking
“how far can you go”, in religion and writing without loosing something very important. It describes the
landscape of a cold London morning, in 1952, he describes the catholic church and the young people
attending mass but the narrator starts telling the reader how he created the characters, which is a metafictional
element. It may seem like any other realistic novel at the beginning but that changes.
Inside the novel he mentions his previous novels The British Museum is Falling Down he doesn’t name it but
talks about pregnancy (contemptuous). At the end if the novel he becomes a character. There are many
elements that made it experimental, because there is extended use of metafiction.

Small World: An Academic Romance Lodge introduce the themes, structure and characters of traditional
English romances (medieval, renaissance romance) Small World the element of experimentalism is present
through the use of intertextuality. There is this reference to post romances. It is a very interesting novel. The
main character behaves like the character in the traditional English romances. Percy is one of the main
characters and he is a virgin. He is an Irish catholic, that is why he is a virgin. In romances, the knight were
virgins. Everybody is looking for the holy grail. In medieval romances as well. In the novel there is a
character that is called Kingfisher based of fisher king. In romances he was sterile and, in the novel, he is the
most important man in the academic world but the cant has produced any new ideas; he is sterile sexually and
critically. There is a conference in which Percy goes to Kingfisher and all of the sudden he questions
Kingfisher and now he is cured. The same happened in the medieval romances. The are also many
intertextualities with the romances written by Shakespeare. This is base on ()

Kingfisher discovers he had twins with a woman many years ago. The world of conferences is criticized and
the academic world in general. There is metafiction in Small World the main characters are academic. They
talk about the world in their free time, not about work like everybody thought they were doing. There is
intertextual game.

Nice Work experimentalism doesn’t disappear completely but realism comes back with a dominant position.
Robyn is a feminist, believes in post structuralism, university lecturer. She doesn’t believe that characters exist
and the other characters is Vic (Victor), a business man who works very hard when the novel starts, the
university lecturer has become Robyn’s shadow and vice versa; they become each others shadow in their
fields of work; business and teaching. It is a campus novel.

At the beginning Lodge thought that the best way to be truthful to Robin’s world was to be post modernist,
that is why the section dedicated to Robin, should be experimental but Lodge decided that ()
Experimentalism is present through the intertextual game of the Victorian novel and were precisely the
industrial novel. At the beginning of the novel Robyn gives a lecture about industrial novels and everything
she says, happens in Nice Work between Robyn and Vic. Realism comes back into dominant position.
 In the 60s and 70s you had to be experimental, Anti-realistic if you wanted to successful. Things change in
the 80s because they were many realistic novels written in the 80s. Writers had it difficult to ignore the
political and social changes in England, this was a way of avoiding political, economical and social events of
that time, there were riots, unemployment. Nice Work is a comic novel, but is not as comic as Small World. At
this time life in universities was more difficult, it is a bit more serious.

In Paradise News and the rest of the novels, experimentalism doesn’t disappear completely but realism comes
back predominantly. They also reflected how he became deaf during years and had a mid-40s crisis.