Small World

Character	Comic archetype	Axis . Lab function
Persse McGarrigle	Candid knight	Brilliant loser logic . Midlands entry point
Philip Swallow	Institutional survivor	Medium campus satire . tender bad faith
Morris Zapp	Hypermodern strategist	International code satire . gag machine
Angelica Pabst	Quest object	Grail figure . rare and unreachable surface
Fulvia Morgana	Jovial manipulator	Myth parody . structural wink emitter

Lodge wrote Small World as academic conferences expanded into a global routine. The novel converts that routine into plot. Movement becomes the stage. Airports and hotels replace the campus courtyard.

Rummidge anchors the book’s Midlands energy, but the comic engine is internationalised. The local academic satire is stretched into a world circuit where prestige, desire and titles circulate faster than ideas.

Here, the university is not only a place. It is a network of rituals, badges and opportunities that keeps running even when meaning thins out.

Voice and rhythm

• Crossed polyphony. A crowded cast and shifting viewpoints. Internal and external angles. A fast alternation between dialogue, institutions, desire and meta-literary play.
• Epic pastiche. The structure mimics a quest romance, then degrades it into a chase for recognition, papers, sex, chairs, invitations.
• Mobility as satire. Travel becomes a substitute for incarnation. The comic effect comes from non-places, repeated rituals and the loss of a stable “home”.

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Cartography path: Current → Branch → Environment → Role. Labs are optional hubs.

Current . Comedy of Everyday. The individual facing institutions, hierarchies, collective rituals and social codes.

Branch . Campus . Code and etiquette . Pastiche quest.

Environment . 1980s. Global academic circuit. Hotels, airports, auditoriums. Cities as interchangeable backdrops.

Role . Comic engine.

Lab . Midlands Lab. Rummidge as anchor. Provincial institution observed with affectionate cruelty, then projected onto the international stage.

▶ Position in The Novel of Comedy atlas

• Anchor. A major model for the campus novel turned into global choreography.
• Bridge. From Midlands everyday friction to an international comedy of codes.
• Signal. Postmodern structure used as a readable engine, not as pure decoration.

Early reviews (1984)

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“Among recent portrayals of the literary establishment at work and play,I can think of none so consistently entertaining or, in an odd way, so genially fair minded”
Joel Conarroe, The Washington Post Book World (1984). Summary: consistently entertaining, surprisingly fair-minded in its portrait of the literary establishment.

“A three-ring circus of academic drollery.”
Don Cryer, Newsday (1984). Summary: devilishly sophisticated entertainment; jokes work beyond specialists; witty dialogue plus a plot that keeps turning; sympathy for human foolishness.

Legacy within TNoC

• Model. Campus as a ritual machine that produces mobility, rivalry and comic misunderstanding.
• Lens. The quest form upgraded into a modern code comedy of status and circulation.
• Warning. When everything moves, comedy can saturate. Excess becomes part of the point.

In the atlas of novels

• Malcolm Bradbury . The History Man. Campus satire as social x-ray. Darker, more abrasive.
• Kingsley Amis . Lucky Jim. The brilliant loser prototype. Lodge expands the stage.
• A. S. Byatt . Possession. Academic code and literary chase. Different register, similar magnetism of scholarship rituals.

Cross-arts echoes

• British TV comedy · Yes Minister / Yes, Prime Minister (bureaucracy as plot engine), The Thin Blue Line (police grotesque).
• Comics / BD · Gaston Lagaffe (object-catalyst inside an institution), Iznogoud (power-code obsession + backfiring schemes).
• Cinema · Clockwise (Cleese: schedule + institution → pure escalation), A Fish Called Wanda (lies/misreadings as farce mechanics), Burn After Reading (stupidity + misunderstanding as narrative accelerators).

▶ Author’s Note (Lodge) . Key takeaways

• Lodge clarifies the real and the invented. Rummidge is fictional, built from recognisable English geography without mapping one-to-one onto a single city.
• Many universities, places and delegates are invented, or combined, to avoid mistaken identifications.
• He admits drawing on conference material and programmes for realistic texture, while keeping characters imaginary.
• He acknowledges information and hints received from colleagues and friends, too many to list individually.
• He mentions a small set of background reading used for details and inspiration, alongside lived academic experience.

This note is gold for TNoC: it confirms the method. Realistic texture, disguised referential anchors, and a deliberate refusal of direct roman-à-clef identification.

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Internal snippet used for cartography and cross-references.