TEXT ANALYSIS

The text I am going to analyze is a good example of postmodernism writing thanks to the structure, the ideology and themes.

It is an extract from David Lodge’s Nice Work and deals with the main ideas of Postmodernism (decentralization of men and lack of truth).

         The text is committed in creating Robin’s characterization by means of different categories, which all contribute to the woman’s embodiment of the condition of Postmodernism. The third-person, omniscient, intrusive narrator tells the reader about her, so that he/she is not free.

To begin with the female character comes up in contrast to Vic Wilcox, previously introduced. The name “Robin” identify her as an idealistic person, the surname “Penrose” connected her to the world of literature and represents femininity. In addition the cultural background is mentioned: she is a Temporary Lecturer of English Literature. The reader catches the important information that she is precarious and so she expresses a fundamental condition in Postmodernism. What is more the narrator tells her way of thinking, which intrigues the reader. Robin does not believe in the concept of, she connects the novel to capitalism and she is sure about the death of an autonomous and individual “self” in contemporary context. As a result she considers language as a tool of production and intertextuality as the result of the production.

The characterization of Robin Penrose together with her ideas about characters defines the parody of Victorian characterization: the narrator is revaluating traditional categories of characterization.

In addition it is a pretext for the narrator to expand an analysis on the change in literature.

As Robin discusses in her lecture, the rise of the novel coincided with the rise of capitalism in the eighteenth century, so that it is possible to claim that the novel is a capitalist product. Supportive argumentations show that they are both expression of Protestant ethic, which is based on the idea of parallelism between social progress and salvation. Furthermore the novel and capitalism developed the idea of a competitive, individual self, who is rationally responsible for his/her happiness and fortune. As a result the book is a product, produced by the novelists, capitalists of the imagination; manufactured by publishers and consumed by readers.

All that is also demonstrated by the correspondence between crisis of capitalism and crisis of the novel at the end of eighteenth century. As a result of such a crisis, in Modernism and Postmodernism there is the deconstruction of classic novel. Firstly, in Modernism, the process is mainly based on the discussion of fundamental values (authority, truth, centre) and expressed in the need of research. For this reason psychological time and inner reality appear through the shift of the point of view and the flux of consciousness of characters. Secondly and consequently, Postmodernism definitely breaks with the possibility of a centre. It promotes the concept of intertextuality, by which texts have no origins but they are just produced by the dialogue with a net of different texts. In addition the existence of a “self” crumbled and the ideas of multiple identities, isolation and need of inclusion take off.

         All things considerate David Lodge creates a postmodernism text, in which the novel speaks about characters, who produce texts, which are linked to others texts: the structure is a net of texts produced in order to make the reader reflect on the possibilities of writing and reading. As a result Robin’s characterization is a parody of traditional writing, aimed at revealing postmodernism tools.