Eco, Golding’s Rites of Passage and Breaching the Limits of Being

Year 2019, Volume: 21 Issue: 4, 1059 - 1071, 30.12.2019

Volha Korbut Salman

https://doi.org/10.32709/akusosbil.436475

Abstract

William Golding’s novel Rites of
Passage (1980) explores the depths of human experience, absorbed in and
struggling against the cognitive, ontological and referential limits inherent
in its essence. By portraying Edmund Talbot and James Colley on an
equator-crossing voyage to Australia, Golding emphasizes the fact that it is
darkness that lies beyond the lines that systemize and limit human existence,
which is manifested by Colley’s death. In this way, Rites of Passage comports with Umberto Eco’s theory of ‘contractual
realism’, elaborated in Kant and the
Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition (1999), in a sense that it
asserts that within a framework of a cultural contract, there are certain
things that we as human beings are vetoed from doing in our inquiry after the
essence of Being. This article provides a thematic examination of William
Golding’s novel Rites of Passage in
the light of Umberto Eco’s theory of ‘contractual realism’.

Keywords

Umberto Eco, William Golding, contractual realism, being, truth, limit

Eco, Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri ve Varoluşun Sınırlarını Aşmak

Abstract

William Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri
(1980) adlı romanı, bilişsel, ontolojik ve göndergesel sınırlarla çevrilmiş ve
bunlarla mücadele eden insanlık deneyiminin derinliklerini keşfetmektedir.
Edmund Talbot’u ve James Colley’i Avustralya’ya bir ekvator geçiş yolculuğunda
tasvir ederek, Golding, Colley’in ölümünün tezahür ettiği insan varoluşunu
sınırlandıran ve sınırlayan çizgilerin ötesinde yatan karanlığın olduğunu
vurgulamaktadır. Böylelikle, Geçiş
Ayinleri adlı romanı, Umberto Eco’nun “sözleşmesel gerçekçilik” teorisi
üzerine yazıldığı Kant ve Ornitorenk: Dil
ve Biliş Hakkında Denemeler (1999) adlı eser ile bağdaşmaktadır ve bir
kültürel sözleşme çerçevesinde varlığın özünü sorgulayan insanoğlunun bazı
şeyleri yapmaya yasaklandığı iddia etmektedir. Bu makale, Umberto Eco’nun
“sözleşmesel gerçekçilik” teorisi ışığında William Golding’in Geçiş Ayinleri adlı romanının tematik
bir incelemesini sunmaktadır.

Keywords

Umberto Eco, William Golding, sözleşmesel gerçekçilik, varoluş, hakikat, sınır

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