The Comic/ Serious Duality in Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim " ا
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The Comic/ Serious Duality in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim ا ل و ا روا آ أ " ا ظ" By Talat M. Mujahed $#"! ه Supervised by Dr. Sabbar S. Sultan د . +*ر (#)ن M.A. Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Master of Arts in English Language and Literature Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Arts and Sciences Middle East University May, 2011 II Contents Authorization…………………………………………………………………………….I Thesis Committee Decision……………………………………………………….II Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………….III Dedication………………………………………………………………………………..IV Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………….V 1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………. 1 1.1Background of the Study …………………………………………………………….. 1 1.2.1 Biography of Kingsley Amis……….. ………………………1 1.2.2 Campus Novel ….………………………………………………..5 1.2.3 Angry Young Men…………...…………………………………9 1.2.4 Irony and Satire…………………………………………………..11 1.2 Statement of the Problem…………………………………………………16 1. 3 Questions of the Study…………………………………………………….17 1.4 Objectives of the Study…………………………………………............17 1.5 Methods and Procedures………………………………………………….18 III 1.6 Significance of the Study………………………………………………20 1.7 Limitation of the Study………………………………………………….21 1.8 Definition of Terms……………………………………………………….21 2. Review of Related Literature…………………………………………..23 3. The Comic and Serious Elements of Lucky Jim…………………. 38 3.1 Serious Themes behind Ostensible Fun…………………63 3.2 The Theme of Education………………………………………..69 3.3 Class Hierarchy………………………………………………………72 3.4 Love and Its Diversifications……………………………………73 4. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………78 References……………………………………………………………………………80 IV V VI Acknowledgments I am very grateful and thankful for all who supported me to complete my thesis effectively and on time. The work on this thesis has been inspired by my supervisor Dr. Sabbar Sultan to whom I express my deepest thanks for guiding me in this thesis and for correcting various documents of mine with attention and care. I would also like to thank my Department staff member without whom this thesis would not have been possible. VI I Dedication I would like to dedicate this thesis to my Father, Mother and Brothers who have never failed to give me moral support. VIII Abstract The current study examines how Amis’s lucky Jim provides double modes between comedy and seriousness at the same time. The study deals with criticizing the ground realities of the sociocultral and educational aspects of the British lifestyle in the period after the Second World War. As a result, the study reveals the reflection of the social hierarchies in the British community as a main predicament affecting the lower-middle class people and their simple aspirations and dreams of a decent living. From this angle, lucky Jim expresses Amis’s anger and dissatisfaction with the world around him. In doing so, the study describes the events of the novel by quoting, and analysing them to encrust the combination between the apparent comedy and the embedded seriousness in Lucky Jim. The setting of the novel lies in an unnamed provincial university and its main characters who are introduced as members in this university. The general impression one gets out of this microcosm is that it is a genuine picture of the British academy in the years following the hectic years of the Second World War. 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There are four aspects to be tackled. 1.2.1 The Biography of Kingsley Amis Amis, Kingsley (1922-1995), British novelist, whose works take a humorous turn but with a highly critical look at the British society, especially of the period following the end of World War II in 1945. He was born on April, 16, 1922 in a south London nursing home, the only child of William Robert and Rosa Lucas Amis. His father was a senior clerk for Colman's Mustard. Amis inherited his mother's interest in literature; in Memoirs (1991) he writes that she "continued all her life as inveterate a reader as I was in my youth: a book was as much part of her accoutrements 2 at home as handbag and knitting” (p. 21). This domestic background with its literary and cultural interest will be of a great help for that young writer and his first attempts in writing fiction. Amis's first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), is a satirical story of a young college instructor who won the Somerset Maugham Award. The book influenced a number of British playwrights and novelists, including John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe, who were known as the Angry Young Men because of their rebellious and critical attitude toward postwar British society, (Moseley 1993). In his later novels That Uncertain Feeling (1955) and Take a Girl Like You (1960) Amis further explored his disillusionment and sense of bitterness. (Moseley,1993). In the 1970s Amis wrote The Green Man (1970), The Riverside Villas Murder (1973), On Drink (1973), and Jake's Thing (1979). Later works include Stanley and the Women (1984), The Old Devils (1986), a humorous look at middle-class Welsh people, which won the Booker Prize; The Folks That Live on the Hill (1990), a satirical portrayal of middle age, retirement, and quirky family life; The Russian Girl (1994), a droll comedy of manners; 3 and The Biographer's Mustache (1995). Amis also wrote poetry, criticism, and short stories. He began his education at the local schools, including Norbury College. In 1934 he embarked on seven years of studies at the City of London School, which his father and two uncles had previously attended. He received an offer to read English literature at Saint John's College, Oxford, where he met Philip Larkin and became a friend of his until his death from cancer in 1985 (Amis, 1991). He completed his education at Saint John's College at the University of Oxford and then served in the British Army Royal Corps of Signals during World War II. After the war he became a college teacher. During that first year at Oxford, he made friends with Philip Larkin (still his closest friend), John Wain, and Elizabeth Jennings, all, like himself, middle-class, literary, and able students. Amis served three years in the army (in France, Belgium, and West Germany). The first three stories in Amis's first collection of short stories, My Enemy's Enemy (1962), were inspired by his service in the Signal Corps. Late in 1945, at the age of twenty-three, he returned to St. Johns where he 4 earned a first-class degree in 1947 but failed to win a research degree when his thesis ("Poets and their Public, 1850-1900") was rejected. Within a year thereafter, Amis had written a novel, which remained unpublished, and a collection of poems, published as Bright November (1947), married Hilary A. Bardwell in 1948, and took a post as lecturer in English at the University College of Swansea in Wales (Amis, 1991). In 1949 he received a position in the English Department at the University College of Swansea, Wales, where he remained for the next twelve years. There he became acquainted with John Wain, author of Hurry on Down (1953), which-along with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1957), John Braine's Room at the Top (1957), and his own Lucky Jim (1954)--came to be a literary hallmark of a group of young British writers to whom critics referred as “the Angry Young Men”. That Amis has a direct experience in the British academic institutions is a merit which he made use of in his lucky Jim. The situations, attitudes and events in this novel draw heavily on his first hand experiences in the academic world. The ironic and exaggerated aspects of this experience do not reduce their actuality and authenticity. 5 Amis has written hundreds of essays, articles, book reviews, movie reviews, jazz reviews, and letters to the editor in prominent journals on both sides of the Atlantic; in The Spectator (1983) alone (Amis's favorite forum in his early years) he published more than 100 such items between 1953 and 1963. Amis the essayist can be seen at his best in his only collection, What Became of Jane Austen? and Other Questions (1971) . Eighteen of its thirty-one pieces were written in the 1950s; sixteen first appeared in the Spectator (1983) . 1.2.2 Campus Novel One essential question needs to be posed beforehand. It is the definition and the characteristics of the academic novel as seen in the novel of the present study i.e. Lucky Jim . According to Proctor (1957) the academic novel concentrates on the academic life in Oxford and Cambridge, and it is relevant to the worlds present in the provincial universities explored by Lucky Jim. His definition includes the following: The English university novels which appeared in such numbers in the Nineteenth century offer a problem not common to better known Victorian fiction.