Chasing the Satirical Holy Grail in Lodge's Small World
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 isùthe 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 RummidgeùLodge'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.
In Small World, Lodge sets up two plotsùeach with their own "Holy Grail" to reach in the end. On one hand, there is Persse's Grail of sexual satisfaction. On the other is the Grail of the 100,000 UNESCO chair to be awarded. In these two goals, Lodge satirizes two of the most common human vices: the vice of career and success, and that of lust or love.
"I suppose everyone is looking for his own Grail. For Eliot it was religious faith, but for another, it might be fame, or the love of a good woman,...