David Lodge Changing Places Analysis

David Lodge’s fifth novel Changing Places, published in 1975, is the first novel in his celebrated campus trilogy. Recognized as the most experimental novel in terms of narrative techniques, the novel renders a dramatic account of the events in a transatlantic faculty-exchange programme between two fictional universities – the University of Rummidge (a provincial British university) and the State University of Euphoria (an American university). This exchange brings to the fore the riveting contrasts between the educational systems and the attendant academic cultures of England and America.
The University of Rummidge and the Euphoric State University (often referred to as Rummidge University and Euphoric State University, respectively, in the novel) collaborate on an exchange scheme for a period of six months to celebrate the two institutions’ fortuitous architectural resemblance. Each university has an imposing replica of the Tower of Pisa; the only difference between the replicas being in their awe-inspiring sizes and the eclectic materials deployed for their construction: “built of white stone and twice the original size at Euphoric State and of red brick and to scale at Rummidge, but restored to the perpendicular in both the instances” (Lodge, Changing Places 13). The two participants in the faculty-exchange

While Froelich is content with contending for the chairmanship of the English department of Benedict Arnold University, Zapp chases daunting plans like making the English departments of prominent universities redundant by analyzing exhaustively the creative works of major English authors in every possible way. Zapp cherishes another towering ambition: to be the highest paid professor of English worldwide. Lodge animatedly notes Morris’ condescending impression of his inept