A Study Of The Paradox Of Modernity In To The Ends Of The Earth From The Perspective Of Neo-victorian Novel

William Golding(1911-1993)was one of the most notable British writers of the 20 th century,his work To the Ends of the Earth,also known as the Sea Trilogy,consisting of Rites of Passage(1980),Close Quarters(1987)and Fire Down the Below(1989).The first volume,Rites of Passage(1980)won the Booker Prize that year.The trilogy is the culmination of Golding’s late work,with its thematic and structural continuity and integrity.In the 1980 s,there was a boom in the creation of historical novels in England,among which the "Neo-Victorian Novel" took the Victorian era as the background,using the historical experience to look at the contemporary human existence and reflect on the paradoxical propositions of modernity.To the Ends of the Earth is also part of the "Neo-Victorian Novel" series,which is a dramatic and grotesque sea voyage in the form of three diaries from the point of view of Talbot,a nobleman’s son in the 19 th century in England.This thesis explores the paradoxical features of modernity in To the Ends of the Earth by analyzing the conflict between the characters’ instrumental rationality and value rationality,the construction and dissolution of subjectivity in narrative,and the collapse of traditional values in imagery archetypes.The introductory part firstly compares Golding’s life and creative works,followed by a discussion of the Neo-Victorian novel’s reflection on modernity through a retrospective look at the characteristics of the Victorian era,which corroborates the theme of the paradox of modernity in Golding’s creation.After that,it reviews the current situation of the study of Golding’s To the Ends of the Earth and puts forward the research ideas of this thesis.Chapter one discusses the double writing of the novel’s characters.Through the analysis of the loss of faith of the priest Colley,the confrontation between Summers and Bennett,and the "reverse growth" of Talbot,it can be seen that due to the influence of both instrumental and value rationality,the existence of the characters’ selves and the surrounding social-cultural environment are full of paradoxes,and the characters also show contradictory and conflicting relationships with each other.This contradiction is actually a symptom of the paradox between Enlightenment modernity and aesthetic modernity in modernity.Chapter two explores the diversity of narrative forms in the novel.To the Ends of the Earth adopts the first-person perspective of diary and epistolary to establish the subjectivity of the characters,but then gradually dissolves the authority of the subject through polyphonic narrative and spatial narrative,and the subjectivity goes down.From the narrative of the novel,we can see the paradox of modernity in which the effort of constructing the subject and the ultimate failure of constructing the subject are contradictory.Chapter three analyzes the intertextuality between the imagery archetypes in the novel and the imagery of the classic text.To the Ends of the Earth uses the "albatross" from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,the Noah’s Ark and the Garden of Eden from the Bible,but rewrites their symbolic connotations: the ark no longer assumes the function of salvation,and the passengers’ desire to go to the new Garden of Eden will be frustrated after their ordeal.The deformation of imagery and the rewriting of imagery connotations show the collapse of traditional values in modernity.Golding’s writing on the paradox of modernity is in a sense a manifestation of his historical consciousness.In To the Ends of the Earth,he draws on the cultural turning point of the beginning of Victorian Romanticism in the 19 th century as a metaphor for the paradox of modernity that still exists in the second half of the 20 th century.Since the late 18 th century,instrumental reason has continuously suppressed value reason,in which the subject has undergone aberrations,while aesthetic modernity cannot bear the burden of human salvation alone.The two forces keep playing against each other,making the paradox of modernity in a state of dynamic change yet insoluble,and the writing of the paradox of modernity shows Golding’s deep concern for the human condition in modern civilization.