ABSTRACT
David Lodge is one of England’s most famous creative writers and cultural critics, having published a wide range of memorable works from the 1960s until the present. A former professor, Lodge has a commanding grasp of literary history, so his work is historically informed and intentionally structured. Some people believe that the biographical novel is a subgenre or a version of the historical novel. But in reality, the aesthetic form came into existence in reaction against and as a counter to the historical novel. The French Revolution had an enormous impact on the European psyche, so much so that scholars believe it gave birth to history programs. After 1789, professors started to develop and refine the Enlightenment’s scientific instruments of analysis in order to identify and define what caused cataclysmic historical events. The ideas in Nietzsche’s 1874 essay mandated the formation of a corresponding aesthetic form. Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that work, and it qualifies as a bio-fiction.
