Entrusting the Past to the Present: Confessional Writing in Three Novels by William Golding

Études Britanniques Contemporaines

关键词: Augustine;    W. Golding;    confession;    failure;    faith;    language;   

DOI  :  10.4000/ebc.3220

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

This article deals with Golding’s complex recreation of confessional writing in his novels. It reassesses this writing as an Other-oriented, hence potentially redemptive performance, and explores its relationship to time. Saint Augustine’s influence on Golding can be traced back in Darkness Visible, Free Fall and Rites of Passage, whose narrators also attempt to retrieve their experience from chronological time and turn them into spiritual testimonies whose significance will endure in other contexts. What differenciates the modern writer from his illustrious model lies in his narrators all renouncing the certainty that their meaning can be guaranteed by a transcendant interlocutor. Instead, they must trust their own capacity to achieve clear-sightedness in and through language. The faith and failure attendant to this enterprise cannot be separated: the narrators’ attempts to represent themselves in time do not elude incoherence or self-deception, yet they also amount to a moral quest for justice, towards themselves and towards others.

【 授权许可】

Unknown