Small World by David Lodge

Finished David Lodge's wonderful, warm, witty novel today.  It was the introductory text to my university course called Narratives of Romance and Adventure, which skated lightly over the surface of 1,700 years of literature (from Virgil through the Lay of Welund, Chaucer and Shakespeare to Swift).  Lodge's book is crammed with bright ideas and references to all sorts of literary traditions, schools of criticism and other works of fiction and poetry.  The Thames boat on which Perse McGarrigal receives his prize for writing poetry, for example, is called the Annabel Lee, which is the title of the last full poem written by Edgar Allen Poe. That's about unrequited love for an unattainable woman.  Or take the marvellous, dangerous, ridiculous Fulvia Morgana, named after the warrior wife of Marc Anthony and King Arthur's sorceress half-sister.  Brilliant stuff.

I laughed out loud throughout the book.  And I learned quite a bit too.  So, as odd as I may have thought the selection at first to be, I have been wholly won over.  It's an excellent read and an astute framework upon which to build an undergraduate introduction to English literature and theories of literary criticism.