Reexamining the Three-Dimensional Meanings of Persse’s Love Scripts in Small World

Abstract

Small World, the masterpiece of contemporary English writer David Lodge, is famous for its pursuing theme. Persse’s love pursuit is one of the prominent events in the novel. Readers always laugh at Persse’s pursuit, but leaves the reasons of why Persse’s pursuit is so funny untouched. This paper establishes “A continuum of Script Development” model based on Schank & Abelson (1977)’s personal script category, Gioia & Poole (1984)’s prototypical feature of script and Gibbs (2003)’s dynamic construing of script to reveal the knowledge structure of Persse’s love script. At the meantime, the paper specifies three actors (narrator, characters and readers) who construct the meanings of Persse’s love script. It is found that there are three different trails of Persse’s love pursuit under the examination of the script theory. The clashes between the three love scripts are one of the main reasons to achieving the humorous and ironic effects of the novel. Moreover, it expands the meaning of the metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and it highlights the death-rebirth theme of the novel.