Politics and history in William Golding

Politics and History in William Golding provides a much needed politicized and historicized reading of William Golding's novels as a counter to previous, universalizing criticism. Paul Crawford argues that an understanding of fantastic and carnivalesque modes in Golding's work is vital if we are to appreciate fully his interrogation of twentieth-century life. Golding's early satirical novels question English constructions of national identity in opposition to Nazism and the "totalitarian personality." For Crawford, Golding can and must be studied in the wider European tradition of "literature of atrocity." His early novels, especially Lord of the Flies, are preoccupied with atrocity, whereas the later work betrays a greater concern for the status of language and literature.