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Library | Materyal Türü | Barkod | Yer Numarası | Durum |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Pamukkale Merkez Kütüphanesi | Kitap | 0024000 | PR830.P75L63 2002 | Searching... Unknown |
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Özet
Özet
Human consciousness, long the province of literature, has lately come in for a remapping--even rediscovery--by the natural sciences, driven by developments in Artificial Intelligence, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology. As the richest record we have of human consciousness, literature, David Lodge suggests, may offer a kind of understanding that is complementary, not opposed, to scientific knowledge. Writing with characteristic wit and brio, and employing the insight and acumen of a skilled novelist and critic, Lodge here explores the representation of human consciousness in fiction (mainly English and American) in light of recent investigations in the sciences.
How does the novel represent consciousness? And how has this changed over time? In a series of interconnected essays, Lodge pursues these questions down various paths: How does the novel's method compare with that of other creative media such as film? How does the consciousness (and unconscious) of the creative writer do its work? And how can criticism infer the nature of this process through formal analysis? In essays on Charles Dickens, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley and Martin Amis, Henry James, John Updike, and Philip Roth, and in reflections on his own practice as a novelist, Lodge is able to bring to light--and to engaging life--the technical, intellectual, and sometimes simply mysterious working of the creative mind.
Author Notes
Writing both literary criticism and novels, British author David Lodge has learned to practice what he teaches. A professor of Modern English literature, both his fiction and nonfiction have found a large readership in the United Kingdom and the United States. To maintain his dual approach to writing, Lodge has attempted to alternate a novel one year and a literary criticism the next throughout his career.
Lodge's fiction has been described as good writing with a good laugh, and he is praised for his ability to treat serious subjects sardonically. This comic touch is evident in his first novel, "The Picturegoers" (1960) in which the conflict of Catholicism with sensual desire, a recurrent theme, is handled with wit and intelligence. "How Far Can You Go" (1980) released in United States as "Souls and Bodies" (1982) also examines sexual and religious evolution in a marvelously funny way. "Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses" (1975, 1979), based on Lodge's experience in Berkeley as a visiting professor, won the Hawthorne Prize and the Yorkshire Post fiction prize and solidified his reputation in America. Some of the author's other hilarious novels include "Nice Work" (1989), which Lodge adapted into an award-winning television series, and "Therapy" (1995), a sardonic look at mid-life crisis.
Lodge's nonfiction includes a body of work begun in 1966 with "The Language of Fiction" and includes "The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts" (1992) and "The Practice of Writing: Essays, Lectures, Reviews and a Diary"(1996). In a unique approach, he often uses his own works for critical examination and tries to give prospective writers insights into the complex creative process.
David John Lodge was born in London on January 28, 1935. He has a B.A. (1955) and M.A (1959) from University College, London and a Ph.D. (1967) and an Honorary Professorship (1987) from the University of Birmingham. Lodge is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Kirkus Review
Esteemed English novelist Lodge (Home Truths, 2000, etc.) explores the relationship between consciousness and literature. Intrigued by the way the very notion of consciousness seems to be evolving in an age of cyber and virtual reality, the author focuses here on a wide range of topics that offer perspective on consciousness in fiction. He discusses, among other things, recent theories of artificial intelligence, the historical give-and-take of literature and literary criticism, the timelessness of Dickens, and E.M. Forster's juggling of the various English class-consciousnesses in his seminal novel Howard's End. Delving into the recent popularity of filming Henry James's fiction, Lodge reveals the disparity between James's in-depth examination of human consciousness and the usually inadequate attempts to replicate it onscreen. He explores the work of the prominent American postwar authors John Updike and Philip Roth, with particular emphasis on Roth's prolific body of work and daring (or reckless) plumbing of the depths of sexual consciousness. Lodge also provides an affectionate portrait of England's father-and-son novelists Kingsley and Martin Amis (whose relationship was as special as it was famously troubled), and sympathetically assesses Experience, Martin's account of the years in the mid-1990s when his father died and his marriage broke up, among other life crises. In a warm appraisal of Evelyn Waugh's work, Lodge contrasts his own lower-middle-class origins in postwar England with the sparkling appeal of the glittering Brideshead Revisited cosmos, affectionately dissecting Waugh's precise and unerring comic flair. Finally, Lodge describes the rationale behind one of his own recent novels, Thinks . . . (2001), in which he pursues the subject of consciousness in a fictional form. All of these pieces have the well-crafted tone of an assured master who knows writers and the business of writing extremely well. Lodge offers a kaleidoscopic adventure into the potentially forbidding realm of "consciousness studies," sticking with familiar elements (well-known authors and books) and skillfully breaking his larger, more amorphous ideas into digestible bits. Provocative and fascinating.
Library Journal Review
British literary critic-turned-novelist Lodge has made a name for himself as author of highly entertaining and well-crafted satirical novels (e.g., Small World, Changing Places). As a critic, he is interested in the phenomenon of human consciousness and the way it finds expression in the British novel. In these previously published essays, Lodge presents lucid summaries of current consciousness research to investigate the novel's access into the vagaries of the human psyche. However, his insights into the literary imagination and individual works are not entirely original, and he revisits terrain and recasts arguments overly familiar from his previous studies. Lodge's prose is perfectly pleasant to read but neither particularly elegant nor sufficiently idiosyncratic to engage a reader fully. His deliberate and complacent indifference to literary theory, so amusingly spoofed in his novels, apparently blinds him to concerns that could shake his liberal faith in literary culture and the corresponding liberal suspicion of the economic forces behind it. Even at their most interesting, Lodge's essays can sound as if they were meant to be offered on tape by long-distance learning centers catering to those in search of highbrow validation. Recommended for large academic libraries only. Ulrich Baer, NYU (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface |
| 1 Consciousness and the Novel |
| 2 Literary Criticism and Literary Creation |
| 3 Dickens Our Contemporary |
| 4 Forster's Flawed Masterpiece |
| 5 Waugh's Comic Wasteland |
| 6 Lives in Letters: Kingsley and Martin Amis |
| 7 Henry James and the Movies |
| 8 Bye-Bye Bech? |
| 9 Sick with Desire: Philip Roth's Libertine Professor |
| 10 Kierkegaard for Special Purposes |
| 11 A Conversation about Thinks... |
| Notes |
| Index |