校園小說裡的學術規範與倫理：以三位英美教授-小說家為例

American critic and feminist Elaine Showalter believes that by investigating the development of campus novels, one can discern the reasons why the higher education of British and American academia has degenerated from being the “Ivory Tower” of the 1950s, to the “Tenured Tower” in the 90s, and would end up being a “Tragic Tower” in the 21st century. She says, “the academic novels of the nineteen fifties depict a society with its own rules and traditions, cut off from the outside world, a snug, womblike, and, for some, suffocating world” (Faculty Towers 17). The publication of British campus novels has preceded America’s, but this genre did not grow in stature with defined literary characteristics until the 1950s with the popularity of campus novels in America. Most campus novels are identified with jesting and humor, but at the same time feature candid piercing criticism at the flamboyant arrogance and exploitative rivalry of the academics. Many British and American scholars have composed campus novels, as texts of self-ridicule and self-reflection, for examining academic integrity and ethics, and help to reconnect the academia with the outside world. What is the relationship between the evolution of campus novels and their social contexts? What are the problems of academic ethics exposed in campus novels, and how are the honor codes of academic ethics evaluated in these works? What are the examples of ethical lapses in academia and what are their reasons? Do conflicts exist between academic freedom and academic responsibilities? What dialogues can the professor-novelists generate with their scholarly criticism and creative writing? What kind of roles do ethnicity and gender play in campus novels? These are issues that this research project aims to explore. This three-year project will study the campus novels by three British or American professor-novelists, analyzing how they criticize others and themselves. An intertextual approach will be adopted to inspect the interrelationship between their scholarly publications and creative writing, and to delve into the problems about academic integrity and ethics that they aim to expose. Considering the evolution and various cultural aspects of campus novels in England and America, this project will study the novels by British writer David Lodge, Jewish American writer Philip Roth and American feminist Carolyn Heilbrun, and conclude with Elaine Showalter’s autocritography on campus novels in Faculty Towers.