1．目的及意义

KingsleyAmis was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher, writing more than20 novels, along with works of social and literary criticism. He was regarded,according to his biographer, Zachary Leader, as “the finest English comicnovelist of the second half of the twentieth century.” Lucky Jim is Amis’ first novel, and also one of his most famousrepresentatives, for which he won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award. Lucky Jimwas published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz.

After decidingwhat I will analyze and the title of my paper under the help of my supervisor, inorder to well prepare my paper, I made great effort to get further informationfrom different sources. Firstly, I downloaded the original English version of Lucky Jim and also the authentic Chineseversion. For the novel itself is the first source, I have read both the twoversion twice and underlined what I would refer to later and what I do notunderstand. After figuring out what the whole story talks about, I began tosearch for second-hand source, especially others’ book reviews. Because of thedepartment requirement that both Chinese and English reference should bereferred to, I have searched on CNKI (Chinese National KnowledgeInfrastructure), Wanfang and Weipu for Chinese reference, and EBSCO,SpringerLink for English. I have downloaded about 15 references so far, andread and marked half of them, which benefits a lot for my paper-writing.

Lucky Jim is widely regarded as acomic novel. In this novel, there exists a lot of preposterousness and comicalmoments. Amis uses a great deal of satire and irony to criticize society. Manyresearchers analyze the satiric and comic art of it. From my perspective, Amistends to show the challenge to English highbrow culture by using satiric andcomic art. Amis takes advantage of unusual plot, funny characters and comicalactions and words to form an obvious contrast against English mainstreamculture一一highbrow culture at thattime.

Since its debut, the research intothis novel is limited. There are only several papers or journals about it inCNKI (Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure), and much less in otherforeign language databases. But some researchers have still analyzed this novelfrom different points of view. For example, Wang Ning, in her paper “TheSatiric Art in Lucky Jim”, said that Lucky Jim was designed to satire thehypocrisy of society and culture in England at that time and full of satiricart (王宁，2010). And Fu Shu Qin andHong Bing Yan, in their essay “The Comic Art in Lucky Jim”, stated that LuckyJim contained a lot of funny or clownish actions, words and ideas and that itis a comedy and filled with comic art（傅淑琴、洪兵燕，2013）. And Zhou Lian Lian, in her essay“The Obedience and Rebellion of Jim from the Anti-heroic Perspective”, pointedout that Jim lived his life followed by obedience and rebellion. Struggling forlife, he always bowed to his department manager fearing for losing his valuablejob. Due to his insubordinate personality, he rebelled in silence from thebottom of his heart (周莲莲，2015). Some researches, like Tang Ju Fang, in her essay “OnAnti-heroism and Social Critical Consciousness in Lucky Jim”, surveyed the personalities of the character Jim andsaid Jim was totally different from other main characters in novel. Instead ofbeing ambitious, polite and rational, Jim was rebellious, funny andpoverty-stricken (唐菊芳，2012). And Zhang Zhong Zai, in his essay “An Anti-culturalnovel”, hold that Lucky Jim was ananti-cultural novel. What these characters did, said and thought were absolutelycontrary to the English mainstream culture at that time (张中载，1998). And Teng Jia Xin,in her paper “Soft Rebellion”, maintained that Jim’s rebellion against eliteculture was double-faced. On the one hand, he hated these hypocritical culturalelites, and it was revolutionary; on the other hand, he economically dependedon what he disliked, and it was compromised (滕嘉欣，2009). Keith Gessen, in his essay“Hate in a Cold Climate”, surveyed the origin of the book. He said: “KingsleyAmis’ novel Lucky Jim has its originsin his intense and competitive friendship with Philip Larkin (Keith, 2012).”Michael Barber, in her essay “If Lucky Jim Could See Him Now”, studied theexistentialism in Lucky Jim (Michael,2002). Though this novel has been analyzed from various aspects, there is stillsomething valuable and untouched.