摘 要

《幸运的吉姆》是英国当代著名作家金斯利·艾米斯的长篇小说，描写了吉姆·狄克逊这个“反英雄”形象，以及试用期的大学历史教师的生活窘境，勾勒出了一幅二战后英国知识分子，特别是学院环境中的来自于社会底层的老师的生活状态图。本文将研究小说中人物的心理活动、言语动作和情节，以及英国精英文化的起源和定义，以此来探讨《幸运的吉姆》中所反映的对精英文化的挑战。希望本文对小说中该主题的分析，能为对作家及其作品的新兴研究做出贡献。

本文包含六个部分。第一部分，导论介绍小说作者；第二部分,介绍研究状况；第三部分，详尽地介绍英国精英文化，具体包括基本定义、显著特征等；第四部分，进行具体的人物心理、言语动作和情节的细节分析，主要分析他们的滑稽性、反叛性；第五部分,分析《幸运的吉姆》带来的社会影响；最后，本文重述对精英文化的挑战这一结论。

关键字：精英文化；荒诞反叛；对比分析；批判挑战

Abstract

Lucky Jim, written by the famous contemporary English writer Kingsley Amis, depicts Jim Dixon, an anti-heroic character, and probationary college history teacher’s life quandaries, and draws a picture of British intellectuals’ life after World War Two, who come from the lower social class. This paper focuses the discussion on characters’ psychological situation, words and actions and plot in order to analyze the theme of challenging English highbrow culture, hoping to make some contributions to new exploration of the author and the novel.

This paper consists of six parts, namely, the introduction, the literature review, three Chapters as the body paragraphs and the conclusion. The introduction introduces the author and the novel. Chapter two focuses on prevails researches on this novel. In Chapter three, the definition, striking characteristics of highbrow culture are given in details. Chapter four initiates concrete analysis on psychology, words and actions, and plot, mainly on their comicality and rebellion. Chapter five analyzes the social significance of Lucky Jim. Finally, the paper restates the conclusion of challenging highbrow culture.

Key Words: Highbrow culture; anti-heroic character; contrast analysis; criticism and challenge

Contents

1 Introduction - 1 -

2 Literature Review - 2 -

3 Highbrow Culture - 3 -

3.1 Origin of Highbrow Culture - 3 -

3.2 Characteristics of Highbrow Culture - 3 -

4 Analysis of Psychology, Words, Actions and Plot - 5 -

4.1 Psychology - 5 -

4.2 Words - 5 -

4.3 Actions - 6 -

4.4 Plot - 7 -

5 Social Significance of Lucky Jim - 8 -

6 Conclusion - 9 -

References - 10 -

Acknowledgements - 12 -

A Challenge to Highbrow Culture: Preposterousness and Rebellion in Lucky Jim

1 Introduction

Born in 1922 in Clapham, London, Kingsley Amis studied at the City of London School on a scholarship. One year later he was admitted into St. John’s College, Oxford in 1941, where he studied English. It was there that he met with Philip Larkin, to whom Lucky Jim is dedicated, and who helps inspire the main characters and who contributes significantly to the structure of the novel (Janice, 1998). In July 1942, Amis began his national service. After servicing in the Royal Corps of Signals in the World War Two, he returned to Oxford in 1945 to finish his degree. Though Amis studied well in English, he had then decided to focus on writing.

Amis is wildly known as a comic novelist in mid to late 20^th-century Britain, but his literary works consist of various genres, such as poetry, essays, short stories, criticism etc. Lucky Jim, Amis’ first novel, is his most famous masterpiece, satirizing highbrow academic set. The novel is considered as part of the Angry Young Men movement, which reacts against the foolishness of conventional British life. His other works likewise depict situations from contemporary British life, often obtained from his own experiences, like That Uncertain Feeling, Take a Girl Like You. He also creates some works related to science, myth and history, for example, The Anti-Death League, The Green Man and The Alteration

Lucky Jim, published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz, won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. It follows the exploration of the nameless Jim Dixon, a reluctant lecture at an unknown provincial English university. The Times includes the novel in its TIMES 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The novel describes Jim, a well-educated medieval history lecturer, comes from lower social class. He hates his hypocritical and careless manager of the History Department, but ironically, he also superficially tries to maintain a good relationship with him by flattering and bowing to him in case of losing his only and valuable job. Not only from job, he also suffers a lot from Margaret, his seeming girlfriend, who takes advantage of emotional blackmail to gain Jim’s sense of responsibility and pity while keeping him in an ambiguous and sexless limbo. The novel reaches its climax during Jim’s public lecture on Merrie England. He ruins his performance by condemning the university pretentious culture. Prof. Welch privately fires Jim, but luckily, Christine’s uncle offers Jim a coveted job as his assistant in London. Later Jim finally stays with Christine and becomes the real lucky Cinderella.

2 Literature Review

Since its debut, the research into this novel is limited. There are only several papers or journals about it in CNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure), and much less in other foreign language databases. But some researchers have still analyzed this novel from different points of view. For example, Wang Ning, in her paper “The Satiric Art in Lucky Jim”, says that Lucky Jim is designed to satire the hypocrisy of society and culture in England at that time and full of satiric art (Wang, 2010). Fu Shu Qin and Hong Bing Yan, in their essay “The Comic Art in Lucky Jim”, states that Lucky Jim contains a lot of funny or clownish actions, words and ideas and that it is a comedy and filled with comic art (Fu amp; Hong, 2013). Zhou Lian Lian, in her essay “The Obedience and Rebellion of Jim from the Anti-heroic Perspective”, points out that Jim lives his life followed by obedience and rebellion. Struggling for life, he always bows to his department manager fearing for losing his valuable job. Due to his insubordinate personality, he rebels in silence from the bottom of his heart (Zhou, 2015). Some researches, like Tang Ju Fang, in her essay “On Anti-heroism and Social Critical Consciousness in Lucky Jim”, surveys the personalities of Jim and maintains that Jim is totally different from other main characters in novel. Instead of being ambitious, polite and rational, Jim is rebellious, funny and poverty-stricken (Tang, 2012). Zhang Zhong Zai, in his essay “An Anti-cultural novel”, holds that Lucky Jim is an anti-cultural novel. What these characters do, say and think are absolutely contrary to the English mainstream culture at that time (Zhang, 1998). Teng Jia Xin, in her paper “Soft Rebellion”, maintains that Jim’s rebellion against highbrow culture is double-faced. On the one hand, he hates these hypocritical cultural elites, and it is revolutionary; on the other hand, he economically depends on what he dislikes, and it is compromised (Teng, 2009). Keith Gessen, in his essay “Hate in a Cold Climate”, surveys the origin of the book. He says: “Kingsley Amis’ novel Lucky Jim has its origins in his intense and competitive friendship with Philip Larkin (Keith, 2012).” Michael Barber, in her essay “If Lucky Jim Could See Him Now”, studies the existentialism in Lucky Jim (Michael, 2002). From all mentioned above, it is clear that these analyses mainly focus on two aspects, namely, characteristics of Jim, such as Zhou, Tang and Teng, and artistic method, like Wang, Fu amp; Hong. Though this novel has been analyzed by different researchers from various aspects, there is still something valuable and untouched, for example, Amis’ attention for writing this novel. This paper aims to handle this problem, trying to figure out his real purpose of writing, viz., challenging and criticizing English highbrow culture.

3 Highbrow Culture

3.1 Origin of Highbrow Culture

During the past several decades, cultural study originating from the UK has been a pervasive topic in European academic circle. They broadly come into all kinds of academic fields and become the most active academic trend. At the same time, they are also the most ambiguous and undefinable field, what’s more, by so far, there is not an accurate definition of it. In spite of various factors, what is clear is its challenge and criticism to highbrow culture (Fu, 2001). From the beginning, cultural study aims to challenge and criticize highbrow culture and tries to eliminate the gap between highbrow culture and pop culture. In other words, it develops in the process of combatting with highbrow culture.

Where dose English highbrow culture originate from? How does it become the opposite against ordinary culture? One of the most significant founders of cultural study, Raymond Williams, in his work Culture and Society, classifies English cultural and social custom through history, analyzes and criticizes the origin and development of highbrow culture, laying a robust foundation for cultural studies. He claims that it is during the Industrial Revolution that cultural conception and the frequently-used word—culture come into the UK (William, 1983). Therefore, any attempt to trace culture or any concept related to culture should start from the Industrial Revolution.