In the present textI am going to analyse an extract taken from David Lodge’s novel “Nice Work” which represents a postmodern interpretation of Hard Times.

The narrator tells about Robyn, a temporary English lecturer at the University of Rummidge, but her lecture conveys a message about literature and communication.

The passage starts with the introduction of Robyn: the narrator characterises her by contrast with Vic Wilcox. First of all, the narrator tells that Robyn doesn’t believe in the concept of character, it is “an illusion created to reinforce the ideology of capitalism”. The rise of capitalism coincided with the rise of the novel, while its crisis in the 20^th century also  coincides with the deconstruction of both capitalism and the novel.

In the second paragraph Robyn explains that literature is a product of a secularized Protestant ethic because it conveys the idea that human beings have the ability to control their actions and to compete with other selves. During her lecture, Robyn provides examples of novelists who made literature a mass-produced cultural artefact: Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson.

In the third paragraph the narrator provides information about her education and cultural background; she read people like Jacques Derrida  Jacques who said “il n’y a pas de hors-text” and it is fundamental. There are no origins:  there is only production. Every text is a product of intertextuality and people produce their ‘selves’ in language.Individuals are what speaks them, not what they speak are the fundamental ideas of “semiotic materialism”. It is a philosophy which adopts the laws of semiotic to analyse reality.

The last lines of the passage describe Robyn as a feminist but also “a dreamer”.

After reading the characterisation, the intelligent reader has not made up an idea about Robyn only from the narrator's words, but also from the use the narrator did of some words; he reports her reflections in a logical way. Additional information is given by the choice of the name “Robyn Penrose”: while the name reminds of Robin Hood, a male character who fights for his generous visions of the world, the surname recalls femininity and sensivity.