The Myth of the Holy Grail

On one hand, there is Persse's grail of sexual satisfaction. On the other is the grail of the 100,000 UNESCO precede to be awarded. In these two goals, order of magnitude satirizes two of the nearly common hu populace vices: the vice of career and success, and that of lust or love.

"I suppose e preciseone is looking for his induce Grail. For Eliot it was religious faith, solely for another, it might be fame, or the love of a true(p) woman," (12). Persse's argument mirrors the intentions of Eliot's poem. The audience comes to understand that , for Persse anyhow, his Grail is the "love of a good woman," thus making light of the Arthurian Grail to begin plug-inh. Immediately, the name "Persse" becomes an allusion to the nanve hero "Percival" of Arthurian legend. As let out points out, "?at a conference at the University of Rummidge familiar from changing Places he has fallen in love, head over heels, with the exquisite and intelligent unless elusive Angelica," (720). It is this love with the elusive Grail that will carry the piece through the rest of the novel, as he chases her across the country in search of his beatified love. This leaves room for Lodge to insert more comedy, obviously.

My hero's story is very straightforward: he's questing for a girl, and this leads to wordplay on girl and Grail. It's uncomplicated enough to generate narrative interest when a man is pursuing a girl who keeps escaping him. The problem was what I should do with the other characters. Wha

---. "Fact and fictionalisation in the Novel: An Author's Note". The

t would they pursue? So I thought up this idea of a UNESCO Chair, which would be the academic job to end all jobs, and everybody would be seek to get it. That is the Grail the older characters are pursuing (Interview).

This is sure a poststructuralist argument noting that literature does not mirror reality, but does correspond to it. Though it is technically a satire, it seems that ion Small World, Lodge cannot escape the fact that he is first and fore closely a professor and critic. Thus, the novel as a full seems to make a strong case for this element of poststructuralism.

So on one hand, Lode is mocking the world of academia, and on the other, he is mocking the naivete of young love. This is a complete working example of satire; Lodge uses his caustic wit to attack those conventions in society that he finds particularly pitiful in his novel.

Here, through the voice of Angelica, Lodge has described his own work. Angelica, in her research on romance, has described the essential plot of Small World. And like every good romance, now that Persse has in conclusion caught up with his love, there is still one more arcanum that is yet to be solved. Persse finally finds the sexual gratification he has been seeking throughout the course of the novel, butr then he is horribly disappointed.

Perhaps one of the most interesting Jabs that Lodge makes however, is at the town of Birmingham, to which he gives the name Rummidge. This is done further in detail in his previous work, Changing Places, which follows two characters that we bonk from Small World: Morris Zapp and Phillip Swallow, as they switch places to teach at one another's university. The novel compares a sad Rummidge to a manifestly ...euphoric Euphoria. Lodge makes light of the University of Bimingham, where he worked as a professor, as well as Berkely, which is characterized in Euphoria.

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