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A Bakhtinian Analysis of William Golding's Rites of Passage: Heteroglossia, Polyphony and the Carnivalesque in the Novel A

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A Bakhtinian Analysis of William Golding's Rites of Passage: Heteroglossia, Polyphony and the Carnivalesque in the Novel A A BAKHTINIAN ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM GOLDING’S RITES OF PASSAGE: HETEROGLOSSIA, POLYPHONY AND THE CARNIVALESQUE IN THE NOVEL A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY UTKU TUĞLU IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE EDUCATION JUNE 2011 Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Meliha Altunışık Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Prof. Dr. Wolf König Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret Sönmez Supervisor Examining Committee Members Prof. Dr. Nursel İçöz (METU, ELIT) Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret Sönmez (METU, ELIT) Assist. Prof. Dr. Nil Korkut Naykı (Başkent, AMER) I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last Name: Utku Tuğlu Signature : iii ABSTRACT A BAKHTINIAN ANALYSIS OF WILLIAM GOLDING’S RITES OF PASSAGE: HETEROGLOSSIA, POLYPHONY AND THE CARNIVALESQUE IN THE NOVEL Tuğlu, Utku M.A., Department of Foreign Language Education Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret Sönmez June 2011, 135 pages This thesis analyzes William Golding’s Rites of Passage using a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque to investigate the points of mutual illumination and confirmation between Bakhtin’s ideas and Golding’s novel. Therefore the method of analysis is divided between a close study of Rites of Passage and an equally close examination of Bakhtin’s ideas. The Bakhtinian concepts studied in this thesis are central to his idea of language and theory of the novel and their analysis in Rites of Passage reveals that while these concepts shed light on the stylistic, structural and thematic complexities of the novel, the novel also verifies the working of these concepts in practice. Moreover, the results of the analysis indicate two main points in which Golding’s novel and Bakhtin’s ideas confirm and illuminate each other. The first point is related to Bakhtin’s celebration of the novel genre for its iv capacity to include diverse elements, a celebration that finds its counterpart in Golding’s novel due to the novel’s heteroglot nature, polyphonic structure and inclusion of the carnivalesque. The second point is related to Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism which emerges as a relational property common to his mentioned concepts. As this thesis shows, Golding’s Rites of Passage is a dialogic novel in this regard, with its foregrounding of dialogic relations between heteroglot languages, characters’ voices and social classes. This thesis ends with a discussion indicating postmodern aspects of Bakhtin’s ideas and Golding’s novel, which include intertextuality, the problematization of truth, and the blurring of boundaries between opposites. Keywords: Mikhail Bakhtin, William Golding, heteroglossia, polyphony, the carnivalesque v ÖZ WILLIAM GOLDING’İN GEÇİŞ AYİNLERİ ADLI ROMANININ BAKHTİNCİ BİR İNCELEMESİ: ROMANDA HETEROGLOSSİA, ÇOK SESLİLİK VE KARNAVALESK Tuğlu, Utku Yüksek Lisans, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Yrd. Doç. Dr. Margaret Sönmez Haziran 2011, 135 sayfa Bu tez, Bakhtin’e ait heteroglossia, çok seslilik ve karnavalesk kavramlarının detaylı bir incelemesini kullanarak William Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri adlı romanını, Bakhtin’in fikirleri ve Golding’in romanı arasındaki ortak aydınlatıcı ve doğrulayıcı noktaları araştırmak amacıyla analiz etmektedir. Bu nedenle, izlenen yöntem, Geçiş Ayinleri’nin ayrıntılı bir şekilde incelenmesiyle, aynı şekilde Bakhtin’in fikirlerinin incelenmesi arasında eşit şekilde bölünmüştür. Bu tezde çalışılan Bakhtin’e ait kavramlar, Bakhtin’in dil fikrine ve roman teorisine temel oluşturmaktadır. Bu kavramların Geçiş Ayinleri’ne bağlı analizi ise bunların romandaki üslup, yapı ve konu yönünden karmaşıklıklara ışık tutarken, romanın da bu kavramların uygulamadaki işlerliğini doğruladığını ortaya çıkartmıştır. Buna ek olarak, incelemenin sonuçları, Golding’in romanının ve Bakhtin’in fikirlerinin birbirlerini doğruladığı ve aydınlattığı iki ana noktaya vi işaret etmektedir. Birinci nokta, Bakhtin’in farklılıkları barındırma anlamında roman türünün kapasitesini övmesidir ki bu nokta Golding’in romanında, romanın heteroglot doğası, çok sesli yapısı ve karnavaleski içeriğine katması sebebiyle karşılığını bulmaktadır. İkinci nokta, bahsedilen Bakhtin’e ait kavramların ortak ilişkisel özelliği olarak ortaya çıkan diyalojizm fikriyle ilgilidir. Bu tezin de gösterdiği gibi, Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri romanı, heteroglot diller, karakterlerin sesleri ve sosyal sınıflar arasındaki diyalojik ilişkileri ön plana çıkartmasıyla bu bağlamda diyalojik bir romandır. Bu tez, Bakhtin’in fikirleri ve Golding’in romanının, metinlerarasılık, gerçeklik kavramının problemleştirilmesi ve zıtlıklar arasındaki sınırların belirginsizleştirilmesini içeren postmodern yönlerine ilişkin bir tartışmayla son bulur. Anahtar Kelimeler: Mikhail Bakhtin, William Golding, heteroglossia, çok seslilik, karnavalesk vii To My Father viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Margaret Sönmez, who has supported me at my every step in this thesis process and devoted her time to give me valuable and fruitful feedback. It has been a pleasure to write this thesis under her guidance. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Nursel İçöz whose Twentieth-Century British Novel course has inspired me to write a thesis on Golding and Bakhtin. I also take this opportunity to express my gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ünal Norman for giving me constant support and encouragement throughout my graduate study at METU. I sincerely thank Assist. Prof. Dr. Nil Korkut Naykı for being in my thesis committee, for reading my thesis in such a short time and for her enlightening comments. Finally, I owe my wholehearted gratitude to my dear wife, Ayşin, for her endless encouragement, patience and love. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS PLAGIARISM………………………………………………………....................iii ABSTRACT……………………………………...……………………………….iv ÖZ……………………………………………………………………………...…vi DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………..viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………ix TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………….x CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………1 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND……………………………………….5 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………5 2.2 Heteroglossia…………………………………………………………17 2.3 Polyphony……………………………………………………………31 2.4 The Carnivalesque……………………………………………………44 3. HETEROGLOSSIA IN RITES OF PASSAGE…………………………..60 4. POLYPHONY IN RITES OF PASSAGE………………………………...78 5. THE CARNIVALESQUE IN RITES OF PASSAGE……………….……98 6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………124 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………131 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This thesis will analyze William Golding’s Rites of Passage through a detailed examination of the Bakhtinian concepts of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque with the aim of investigating the extent to which Bakhtin’s ideas and Golding’s novel provide mutual illumination and confirmation. Therefore the technique of analysis is equally divided between a close study of Golding’s novel and an equally close examination of Bakhtin’s ideas. William Golding (1911-1993) was one of the major British novelists of the post-World War II era. As Gindin points out in regard to Golding’s novels, “each of the fictions is singular, original, a condensed version of human experience compressed into distinctive form. […] His fictions are dense, difficult and can appeal in ways that are simpler than the complexities they reveal” (7). Golding’s Rites of Passage (1980) is not an exception to this generalization. It is the first novel of his sea trilogy called To The Ends of the Earth, preceding Close Quarters (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). The novel stands alone as a complete novel without its two sequels and it has been one of the most popular books of Golding’s oeuvre. It also won the Man Booker Prize in 1980, a prestigious British award for fiction. As Nadal points out, “Rites of Passage contains the typical elements that characterize Golding’s works: a fixed and limited setting, the broader setting of the sea, tragic structure, a shift in point of view, the scapegoat figure, […] the related themes of evil and social class, and, last but not least, the ironic rewriting of previous texts.” (102). Together with the inclusion of these diverse elements, which makes the novel suitable for a Bakhtinian analysis since Bakhtin’s concepts celebrate the novel genre for its capacity to bring diverse elements together, three important aspects of Rites of 1 Passage originated the idea of writing this thesis. These are Golding’s foregrounding of language diversity, his use of double narrative, and his questioning of an unjust class system by eradicating the boundaries between social classes on several occasions in the novel. These three eye-catching aspects of the novel have their counterparts in Bakhtin’s idea of heteroglossia, polyphony and the carnivalesque respectively, but they have not been looked at from a Bakhtinian perspective
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