Narrating Literary Theory

Certain novels narrate literary theory at various levels, thus playing a central role in the theorization of literature. In David Lodge’s Small World, various characters allegorically represent major schools of theory. The novel’s cast of characters includes a daily life structuralist, a deconstructivist who loses faith in deconstruction, a Marxist who drives a Bentley, and a meta-theorist, among others. Together they form a panorama of twentieth-century literary theory transferred onto the diegetic level of the literary text. Laurent Binet’s The 7th Function of Language is a historical novel novel about all the important representatives of twentieth-century theory. Similarly to Small World, the characters behave allegorically according to their theoretical approach. In addition, however, a dialogical presentation of theory (in the form of debating duels) plays an important role in Binet’s novel. This allows for various theories to be presented ‘in action’. Moreover, The 7th Function of Language ‘re-theorizes’ its fictional reality, offers a metaization of theory, and thus constitutes a first step toward a possible extrapolation of (modified or new) theory from literature.