Language of Fiction: Essays in criticism and verbal analysis of the English novel

by David Lodge

"The Language of Fiction" was the first book of criticism by the novelist David Lodge. In it he established a fresh approach to the appreciation of literature that focuses the reader's attention on the significance of language. This edition has a new foreword from David Lodge and includes in its entirety the comprehensive afterword from the 1984 edition.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Criticism, Literature, British Literature, 20th Century, Writing

346 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

David John Lodge was an English author and critic. A literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The second two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T.S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as Point of View (Henry James), The Stream of Consciousness (Virginia Woolf) and Interior Monologue (James Joyce), beginning with Beginning and ending with Ending.

Reviews

[Andrew Wardle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this thinking it was a companion volume to his "The Art of Fiction" which I greatly enjoyed. That one was literary criticism stripped of jargon and adapted for the general reader. This one is much more an academic work aimed at students and other English Literature experts. But Lodge is always an entertaining and instructive author, so read on.
This book, written in the 1960s, divides into two unequal sections: the first a theoretical argument and the (longer) second some illustrative examples from famous novels to develop the author's thesis: that novels, like poetry, can be subjected to close textual analysis to expand and enrich our understanding.
I'm a strictly amateur literature reader and I struggled a little with the academic discourse of part 1, but, as I understood it, the author's contention is that we accept that poetry can be subjected to this kind of word-by-word analysis because every word must fit metre and rhyme and sit harmoniously with every other word or the overall artistic effect is ruined: but prose fiction also conveys its message entirely through its language - so can we not apply similar quasi-objective analysis to novels rather than express our opinion through subjective impressions ? He argues his case very persuasively, quoting both supporting and contrary arguments from other literature scholars. This section, for a scientist, became very "words about words about.......", so I was pleased to move on to his examples in part 2.
On the examples quoted, I would have to say his case is "not proven". His analysis, of "Mansfield Park", "Jane Eyre", "Tess.......", "Hard Times", "The Ambassadors", "Tono-Bungay", and several works by Kingsley Amis, is of course interesting and illuminating, but doesn't come to any convincing conclusions. The best argument (also expounded in "The Art of Fiction") is made for "The Ambassadors", where subtle changes in the use of language beautifully convey the naive hero's dawning realisation that his "friends" have deceived and betrayed him. I wanted more like this: more like the explanation (not from this book) that Flaubert deliberately uses dull and repetitive language in the sections of "Madame Bovary" where Emma cannot be with her lover to give the reader a sense of her ennui and the dullness of her life without him.......that's what I expected from this book.
But instead we get a treatise on how many synonyms for "judgement" are used in "Mansfield Park" to ram home how judgemental Fanny Price is, an enumeration of the metaphors about fire, storms, ice, water and stone in "Jane Eyre", and a critique of Dickens' rhetoric and moralising in "Hard Times". None of these offered any new insights or any clue as to why these novels are considered "greater" than those of other authors or other works by the same authors. And, although it's very penetrating and clever to notice them, I don't think they offer a richer experience to the reader.
So I found this book interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. English Literature students may find it useful, but for the general reader, "The Art of Fiction" is much more illuminating - and very much easier to read.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much worth revisiting.