EPOS, XVI (2000). págs. 293-302 DAVID LODGE'S CHANGING PLACES THE PARADOXES OF A LIBERAL METAHCTIONIST BÁRBARA ARIZTI MARTIN Universidad de Zaragoza ABSTRACT In Changing Places David Lodge evolves in the direction of the «problematic novel», a category he charaeteri.es in «The Novelist at the Crossroads» as a «novel-about-itself», a «game-novel» that leaves the reader not with any simple message but with «a paradox about the relationship of art to Ufe». Changing Places -published in 1975- is not eontent with capturing reahty through just one literary tradition and emerges as an attempt to make 1 j r- . „^:=t TriHcrp rombining accessibility and experiment reahsm and metafiction coexist. l^odge, comuimiiB » , . . • • j /• 1 r , R^lilaVí metafictionists— has achieved a kind ot —in the manner of most British meiaiii-uuiii»i.= compromise between experimentalism and reahsm. I propose to start the present study with a brief deseription of the eonnections of Changing Pluces and metafiction, which is not intended to be exhausüve smee the topic has already been tackled by several crities. Then I wdl focus on provmg how the novel constitutes a further stage in Lodge's battle for reahsm. In my v.ew ^ <- • 1 .^««xri^e in order to undertake a renewal ot David Lodge resorts to metafictional strategies in oraer lo u . , ,, , . . 1 u- u ,.>r..iirp« from time to time the challenge ol the reahstic mode, a task which requires trom ume . . . . 1 I II <.U,í analvse Changing Places as an attempt at alternative conventions. I wiU also anaiyse i.>«t *. * , . . . j ll;„<, fVip notentially subversive, experimental containing, controUing and cancelling the poieniiauj energies of postmodernism.