The Formation of a Postmodern Frame of Reference in the Literary Works by William Golding

The article considers the sequence of the early novels by W. Golding with the view to highlight their overall frame of reference in the context of postmodern culture. The concrete works under study are Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, Free Fall and The Spire. A systemic approach to the novels in question allows for building their consolidate genre model with the view to define their general frame of reference. The discursive analysis of meaningful connections between the actual contents and genre forms of the novels series entails the discovery of its mediality channels with the outer currents of philosophical thought and the particular circumstances of the postmodern situation in literature. Further insights into the results of the writer’s experience and contemporary theoretical researches highlight both similarities and essential differences in the attitude of the authors to social and cultural phenomena of postmodernity. The processual findings of this contemporary cross-section study prove the prescience formation of the author’s intelligent design despite its common reference points with concurrent philosophical concepts and academic theories. The eventual outcome of the research leads to the conclusion that the general reference frame of the works under consideration emerged as a comprehensive response of the writer to the objective necessity in postmodern development of literature within the appropriate system of ontological, epistemological, socio-cultural and aesthetic coordinates.