Chasing the Satirical Holy Grail

In Small World, David Lodge uses wit, irony, and the myth of the Holy Grail in order to satirize the world of academia, where the phrase "publish or perish" still holds a great deal of truth. Lodge creates a somewhat surreal world in the novel, which, in poststructuralist fashion, corresponds to reality without mirroring it entirely. In his satirical approach to the life of Persse McGarrigle, he is able to meticulously and humorously attack human vice and folly through his own wit and irony.

To understand this argument, one must first understand the notion of satire. Thai is the tenets of satirical literature. In literature, a satire is generally understood to be a work in which the foibles of humanity are attacked in a humorous light. Through comic situations, Lodge has certainly achieved this.

The novel begins in April in Rummidge Lodge's mirror of Birmingham, with an allusion to Eliot's The Waste Land. "April is the cruellest month," the novel begins (3). Certainly it seems cruel in the image that Lodge paints into the mind of the audience. It is a snowy and cold April, hardly a spring break-worthy season. Seemingly more important however is the fact that he draws upon The Waste Land to allude to the Arthurian Grail myth. He uses the reference to Eliot's poem at the beginning of the novel to foreshadow the later use and satire of the Grail myth in his own work.