IDENTITY COORDINATES IN DAVID LODGE’S ACADEMIC TRILOGY
IDENTITY COORDINATES IN DAVID LODGE’S ACADEMIC TRILOGY

Summary/Abstract: The paper aims to explore the identity / alterity mechanisms involved in the construction of some of David Lodge’s protagonists, especially the pairs formed by Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, Angelica and Lily Pabst, and Vic Wilcox and Robyn Penrose in the set of novels best known as his Academic Trilogy. The professorial exchange in Changing Places, the various instances of mistaken identity in Small World and the shadow scheme in Nice Work will be used as starting points for an analysis of spatial as well as mental geographies, focusing both on the contrasting personalities of the protagonists involved in these interactions and on the clash of different cultures. The paper will include discussions of the different worlds explored and contrasted in the three novels (British versus American universities, mentalities and ways of life, intellectual versus carnal knowledge, the academic environment versus the apparently more prosaic space of business and industry) and will also emphasise the distinct nature of the various pairs analysed.

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