Abstract

The works of William Golding are noted for their biting style, poetic narration and deep perspective into human nature. Lord of the Flies is Golding’s first novel which has become one of the most widely-read English novels. It describes a story set in a future atomic war. A group of British boys were stranded in an uninhabited tropical island where they struggled to survive. Since its publication, Lord of the Flies has drawn great attention from western critics, who have made a lot of comments from the angles of human evil, narrative structure, symbolism and myth and archetype, etc.
On the basis of previous research, this paper is intended to compare Lord of the Flies with traditional British desert island literature to explore their differences and to highlight the transcendence in this novel. The first part will briefly introduce the life of William Golding, the main idea of Lord of the Flies, and research status about the novel among literary circles. The second part will briefly analyze the development and characteristics of the British deserted island literature. Firstly, it will search the origin of deserted island literature. Secondly, it will briefly explore the development and characteristics of island literature in its development. The third part is the core part of this paper. It will mainly study on the inheritance and transcendence of traditional British deserted island literature in Lord of the Flies. First, it attempts to find some common characteristics with traditional British deserted island literature, For example, the setting and plot of the novel share similarities with previous island literature; there are obvious deserted island elements, like the traditional adventure trilogy model and so on. Next, through comparative analysis between the novel and previous deserted island novels, the paper will focus on how Golding applied the theme of “evil human nature” in this novel, by using unique characters and metaphor, symbol and other artistic techniques, so as to endow new connotation to deserted island literature. The last part is the conclusion of the paper.

Keywords: William Golding  Lord of the Flies  British desert island literature  inheritance development

摘要

威廉·戈尔丁的作品以其犀利的文风，诗歌般的叙事以及对人性的深刻洞察而著称。《蝇王》是其第一部也是最有代表性的一部作品，描述了在一次未来原子战争中，一群英国男孩落难到一座荒无人烟的热带海岛之后的生存经历。自发表后，《蝇王》就受到西方评论家的高度关注，出现了大量相关评论，研究主要集中在“性本恶”、叙事结构、象征主义及其神话原型等方面。
在前人研究基础上，本文通过《蝇王》与传统英国荒岛小说的异同，突出它对荒岛文学的发展与超越。论文第一部分将简要介绍戈尔丁的生平，《蝇王》的作品内容简介，以及文学界对于《蝇王》这部作品的主要研究成果。第二部分将对英国荒岛文学的发展脉络和特点进行简要的梳理，首先简要追溯荒岛文学的来源，其次对发展脉络进行简要梳理并发掘荒岛文学的特点。第三部分是论文的主体部分，主要从《蝇王》对英国传统荒岛文学的继承和超越两方面入手，首先介绍了《蝇王》呈现出荒岛文学作品的一些共同的特点，比如说小说的背景和大体的故事情节都跟以往的荒岛文学作品有相似之处；小说中有明显的荒岛意象，遵循着传统荒岛历险三部曲模式等等。其次通过小说与以往传统荒岛文学的比较分析，重点探索戈尔丁如何通过引入“人性恶”的主题，采用独特的人物刻画以及隐喻、象征等艺术手法，赋予荒岛文学新的内涵。最后是论文的总结部分。

关键词: 威廉·戈尔丁；《蝇王》；英国荒岛文学；继承；发展