Memory performance in William Golding’s “Envoy Extraordinary”

William Golding’s fascination with history is evident both in his essays and his novels. In an essay titled “Digging for Pictures” he observes that one of the main driving forces in his work as an amateur archaeologist was his desire for “a connection with the past.” Knowing Golding’s preoccupation with history, it should come as no surprise that he is also deeply interested in the means by which people represent the past to themselves – both the distant past, which they did not witness, and the past that belongs to their subjective experience. The aim of this article is to analyse Golding’s “Envoy Extraordinary”, the third novella published in The Scorpion God. The article begins with the discussion of recollective memory, concentrating on the notion of “memory performance.” It then applies this concept to the analysis of chosen passages from Golding’s novella in order to show the relational aspect of memory. The discussion emphasizes the important role of emotions in the recollection process, both in spoken and written discourse: emotions make autobiographical discourse seem more authentic, and they provide narrative continuity between the subject’s past and present selves. Those observations are made in the context of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, and Golding’s autobiographical texts, most importantly, his essay “The English Channel” from his collection The Hot Gates.Marek Pawlicki is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures of the Silesian University. He has published a critical study of J.M. Coetzee’s prose Self-Reflexivity in the Chosen Works of J.M. Coetzee (2013) and articles on the works of Nadine Gordimer, John Banville, Anne Enright and Colm Tóibín. His current research is on memory and confessional discourse in contemporary British fiction.University of Silesia in KatowiceBal, Mieke, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds.). 1999. Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present. Hanover: University Press of New England.Baker, James R. 1973. Rev. of The Scorpion God, by William Golding. NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction Autumn 1973, 62-70.Berns, Ute. 2009. “Performativity.” Handbook of Narratology. Ed. Peter Hűhn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid and Jőrg Schőnert. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 370-383.Brewer, William F. 1996. “What is recollective memory?” Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory, Ed. David C. Rubin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19-66.Carey, John. 2009. William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber.Christianson, Sven-Åke and Martin A. Safer. 1996. “Emotional Events and Emotions in Autobiographical Memories.” Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory. Ed. David C. Rubin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 218-243.Golding, William. 1965. The Hot Gates. London: Faber and Faber.---. 1987. “Envoy Extraordinary.” The Scorpion God. London/Boston: Faber and Faber, 117-178.Golding William, and James R. Baker. 1982. “An Interview with William Golding.” Twentieth Century Literature 28, 130-170.Hogan, Patrick Colm. 2011. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Kinkhead-Weekes, Mark, and Ian Gregor. 1967. William Golding: A Critical Study. London: Faber and Faber.Mandel, Barret J. 1980. “Full of Life Now.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 49-72.Nalbantian, Suzanne. 2003. Memory in Literature: From Rousseau to Neuroscience. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2008. Confessions. Trans. Angela Scholar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Sabbagh, Karl. 2011. Remembering Our Childhood: How Memory Betrays Us. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Starobinski, Jean. 1980. “The Style of Autobiography.” Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Ed. James Olney. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 73-83.Walker, Richard W., John J. Skowronski, Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Rodney J. Vogl, Timothy D. Ritchie. 2009. “Why people rehearse their memories: Frequency of use and relations to the intensity of emotions associated with autobiographical memories.” Memory 17, 760-773.Warnock, Mary. 1989. Memory. London: Faber and Faber.15 (4/2016)192