Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Bölcsészettudományi Kar DOKTORI DISSZERTÁCIÓ Székely Péter The Academic Novel in the Age of Postmodernity: The Anglo-American Metafictional Academic Novel Irodalomtudományi Doktori Iskola, A doktori Iskola vezetője: Dr. Kulcsár Szabó Ernő Modern Angol és Amerikai Irodalom Program, A program vezetője: Dr. Sarbu Aladár A bizottság tagjai és tudományos fokozatuk: Elnök: Dr. Kállay Géza PhD., dr. habil., egyetemi tanár Hivatalosan felkért bírálók: Dr. Fülöp Zsuzsanna CSc., egyetemi docens Dr. Sarbu Aladár DSc., egyetemi tanár Titkár: Dr. Farkas Ákos PhD., egyetemi docens További tagok: Dr. Bényei Tamás PhD. CSc., dr. habil., egyetemi docens Dr. Péteri Éva PhD., egyetemi adjunktus Dr. Takács Ferenc PhD., egyetemi docens Témavezető és tudományos fokozata: Dr. Dávidházi Péter DSc., dr. habil., egyetemi tanár Budapest, 2009 Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 4 I. WHAT IS AN ACADEMIC NOVEL? .......................................................................................... 11 1.1. NOMENCLATURE ................................................................................................................................. 11 1.2. THE DIFFICULTIES OF DEFINING ACADEMIC FICTION ................................................................................ 12 1.2.1. THE STEREOTYPICAL NOTION OF THE ACADEMIC NOVEL ............................................................................ 12 1.2.2. SETTING ........................................................................................................................................... 15 1.2.3. SATIRE ............................................................................................................................................ 18 1.2.4. WORKING DEFINITION ........................................................................................................................ 22 1.3. THE ACADEMIC NOVEL: FACT OR FICTION? ............................................................................................ 26 II. INESCAPABLE MIMESIS: ACADEMIC FICTION AS LITERARY REALISM ....................................................................... 31 2.1. MODES OF REFERENTIAL CRITICISM ...................................................................................................... 31 2.1.1. TYPE I: THE ACADEMIC NOVEL AS A DOCUMENTARY OF INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE ......................................... 32 2.1.2. TYPE II: DOCUMENTARIES WITH A GENERALIZING PERSPECTIVE ................................................................ 34 2.1.3. TYPE III: THE CONCEPTUALIZING PERSPECTIVE ...................................................................................... 36 2.1.4. TYPE IV: THE HISTORICIZING PERSPECTIVE ........................................................................................... 45 2.2. CRITICAL RECEPTION ........................................................................................................................... 48 2.2.1. INESCAPABLE MIMESIS ........................................................................................................................ 48 2.2.2. CRITICISM OF THE MIMETIC APPROACH .................................................................................................. 51 III. FROM LITERARY REALISM TO POSTMODERNISM ....................................................... 53 3.1. THE EXHAUSTION OF REALIST REPRESENTATIONAL TECHNIQUES ............................................................... 54 3.2. THE EMERGENCE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ACADEMIC NOVEL .................................................................... 57 3.3. REALISM, MODERNIST, REALISM, POSTMODERNISM: PARADIGM SHIFTS IN THE NOVEL .................................................................................................................. 61 IV. THE FOUR ASPECTS OF THE METAFICTIONAL NOVEL .............................................. 72 4.1. FICTION WHICH IS CONSCIOUS OF BEING FICTION .................................................................................... 72 4.1.1. METAFICTION: INDIVIDUAL OR COLLECTIVE ENTERPRISE ........................................................................... 72 4.2. METAFICTION AS CRITICAL FICTION ...................................................................................................... 77 4.2.1. METAFICTIONAL AS AN INTERPRETATIVE PARADIGM ................................................................................ 77 4.2.2. ASPECTS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS ........................................................................................................ 78 4.3. METAFICTION AND THE ACADEMIC NOVEL .............................................................................................. 82 V. WRITERLY METAFICTION ..................................................................................................... 84 5.1. THE WELL OF NEW TAMMANY COLLEGE: THE QUESTION OF AUTHORSHIP IN JOHN BARTH’S GILES GOAT-BOY ........................................................... 84 5.2. THE INTRUSIVE AUTHOR IN ISHMAEL REED’S JAPANESE BY SPRING ...................................................... 91 5.3. AUTHORIAL SURROGACY IN PABLO URBANYI’S THE NOWHERE IDEA ...................................................... 98 5.4. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 104 2 VI. CRITICAL FICTION: TEXTUAL METAFICTION IN THE ACADEMIC NOVEL ...................................................... 106 6.1. A TEXTUAL METAFICTIONAL CONDITION (OF ENGLAND NOVEL) .............................................................. 108 6.2. GUIDING METAFICTIONALITY .............................................................................................................. 114 6.3. EXCESSIVE TEXTUAL METAFICTIONALITY ............................................................................................. 119 6.4. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 122 VII. READERLY METAFICTION ................................................................................................ 127 7.1. THE NOTION OF READERLY SURROGACY ............................................................................................... 127 7.1.1. THE SURROGATE READER AS NARRATIVE ACCESSORY ............................................................................. 128 7.1.2. READERLY SURROGACY AS A MEANS OF INTERPRETATION ....................................................................... 134 7.2. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................... 142 VIII. NON-FICTIONAL METAFICTION .................................................................................... 145 8.1. SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS DECONSTRUCTED ................................................................................................ 145 8.2. TYPES OF NON-FICTIONAL METAFICTION .............................................................................................. 149 8.2.1. BIOGRAPHICAL METAFICTION ............................................................................................................. 150 8.2.2. HISTORIOGRAPHIC METAFICTION ......................................................................................................... 156 8.3. CRITICISM OF NON-FICTIONAL METAFICTION ........................................................................................ 160 IX. TWO READINGS OF DAVID LODGE’S SMALL WORLD ................................................ 163 9.1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................. 163 9.2. LITERARY THEORY AT THE CROSSROADS: A REFERENTIAL READING OF DAVID LODGE’S SMALL WORLD .............................................................................................................................................................. 164 9.3. TEXTUAL METAFICTION IN DAVID LODGE’S SMALL WORLD ................................................................ 171 X. CONCLUSION AND SPECULATIONS ................................................................................... 179 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................. 185 3 Introduction The thing is this. That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best – I’m sure it is the most religious – for I begin with writing the first sentence – and trusting to Almighty god for the second. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy As Elaine Showalter observes in her recent book entitled Faculty Towers (2005), ‘the academic novel is by now a small but recognizable subgenre of contemporary fiction and has a small body of criticism devoted to it’1. The curious fact, however, is that albeit the Anglo- American academic novel can boast with an impressively sizeable and versatile literary output, its reception is still organized around one overwhelmingly dominant critical approach: to seek ways of confirming and elucidating how an academic novel describes, comments on or criticizes the experiential reality of higher