Lectures 9-10.

English Literature from the the Fifties to the Nineties.

Allegoric novel has not been used for many years. Allegory was realized in the allegoric poems of the 16^th – 18^th centuries. Allegory was also played on the stage and it was inevitably connected with religion. The term comes from Greek “allegoria”, which means ”speaking otherwise”. The best known example of allegory in English literature is John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress”(1678). It describes the progress of the pilgrim through life .- he passes the House of Beautiful, the Valley of Humiliation, Vanity Fair and Doubting Castle until he finally arrives at the Celestial City, the town of blessings.

Notable instances in English literature are John Donne’s poems and William Blake’s books, Swift’s “Gulliver Travels” and Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. In the middle of the 20^th century this genre came into existence again. Now the author does not always mean religion, though he may. The main thing is that the writer can allow himself a certain degree of freedom, when he writes allegorically.

William Golding (1911-1998) used to write poetry before the war. He worked as an actor, producer and he taught Greek in a boy’s school in Salesbury after the war until 1961. During the war W.Golding commanded a rocket ship. All this experience went into his first book “Lord of the Flies” (1954). He revived the genre of allegory – a mode of expression, which was seldom used in English literature recently. After the first success W.Golding continued to write the novels about the evil, which is in grain in the human nature, which is not a product of civilization. His treatment of evil and original sin transcends the Christian myth. His novels are: “The Spier”, “The Inheritors” (1955), “Free Fall”, “The Scorpion God” (1971),’ “Darkness Visible”(1979), “Rites of Passage” (1980), “Close Quarters”(1987). W. Golding was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1983.

Golding's fiction makes broad use of allusions to classiсal literature, mythology and Christian symbolism. No distinct thread unites his novels (unless it be a fundamental pessimism about humanity), and the subject matter and technique vary. However his novels are often set in closed communities such as islands, villages, monasteries, groups of hunter-gatherers, ships at sea or a pharaoh's court. It has also been said that it is an allegory of World War II. The Inheritors (1955) looked back into prehistory, advancing the thesis that humankind's evolutionary ancestors, "the new people", triumphed over a gentler race as much by violence and deceit as by natural superiority. The Spire 1964 follows the building (and near collapse) of a huge spire onto a medieval cathedral church; the church and the spire itself act as a potent symbols both of the dean's highest spiritual aspirations and of his worldly vanities. His 1954 novel Pincher Martin concerns the last moments of a sailor thrown into the north Atlantic after his ship is attacked.

The Scorpion God (1971) is a volume of three short novels set in a prehistoric African hunter-gatherer band ('Clonk, Clonk'), an ancient Egyptian court ('The Scorpion God') and the court of a roman emperor ('Envoy Extraordinary'). The last of these is a reworking of his 1958 play The Brass Butterfly.

Golding's later novels include Darkness Visible (1979), The Paper Men (1984), comprising Rites of Passage (1980), Close Quarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989).