The Comparative Framework of David Lodge’s ‘Changing Places’

An observation by a writer in residence

Abstract

David Lodge (1935-) is an Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975) is based on his own academic life at Birmingham and experience at the Berkeley as visiting Associate Professor in 1969. The teaching of writing fiction and producing new literature in universities hadn’t been popular in the UK until 70s, but expansion of higher education brought the situation that many writers stayed in university as students or academic staff. Their observations and thoughts at that time still remain in their novels. The purpose of this article is to explore the Lodge’s comparative framework that construct the Changing Places’ imaginary world. Through this case study of interpreting fiction, I tried to identify the limitation of the interpreting fictional text as the data of comparative education. In the first half of this article, I described Lodge as the cultural observer and comparatist. His novel Changing Places has been read as a story that has certain connection with the real world of 1969. The latter is a practical part of an interpretation of fictional text as comparative educational literature. Changing Places is about a story of academic life of the UK and the US. It has two protagonists and both of them are the professors of English. Their universities have an annual professional exchange scheme and they are chosen for this program. The characteristic features of social and vocational life in each country were made amusing by the foreign observer. This study revealed the following two characteristics in Lodge’s comparative strategies. First, he emphasized the cultural differences between the UK and the US, but this story is about a possibility of exchange still. Cultural differences are mentioned as a kind of interruption on the discussion of the educational borrowing, but in this story, remarkable differences aren’t necessarily fatal for exchange. This framework of comparison suggests the reconsideration when we see and try to control the differences. Second, comparisons by Lodge is not fixed by the single binary opposition. Describing people and their culture as the collection of contrasts enable the author to capture the changing world as it is.