Abstract:

The genre of campus novel concentrates on academics and academic life in a university setting where the main action is set in and around the campus of a university. The campus novels in different ways emulate academic life and academics by exhibiting a comprehensive and often paradoxical portrait of Academia. At times it portrays the world of Academia as conceited, vain and impermeable to the outside world, and at other times as a microcosm for society. The objectives of such novels range from complete derision of the academic world, to social and political critique or critical scrutiny of the role of Academia. The authors of campus novels write not only for the academic readers, but also for the non-academics, wishing to be lucid to general public as well. These novels are therefore highly readable, full of amusement, hilarity and humanity. Campus fiction vacillates between pragmatism and experiment and that is why it is concerned with the fastidious realism, on the one hand, and the comic mode of fiction assimilating elements of parody and farce, on the other hand. Campus novels make use of several styles and narrative modes like satiric, absurdist, romanticized, meta-fictional, self-reflective as well as satirical devices and literary techniques like wit, epigram, sarcasm, repartee, allusion, tone and irony to bring out the satire in campus novels. From the point of view of Aristotle, one of the first literary critics, the basic devices that entertain the reader are conflict, peripeteia, and series of cause and effect. That is why the pattern of binary opposition forms the principal structure of the stories of the campus novels. It also functions as the specific or idiosyncratic device which the authors use to entertain and surprise readers. The engaging, and at the same time intellectual reading of campus novels has made this genre immensely popular world-wide

Description:

Tales of Camaraderie, Conflicts, Indian English Campus Novels, popular worldwide, campus novels