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The Sound and the Fury: A Study in Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Olga W. Vickery
Olga W. Vickery*
Affiliation:
Mt. Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass.
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Extract

The sound and the Fury was the first of Faulkner's novels to make the question of form and technique an unavoidable critical issue. In any discussion of its structure the controlling assumption should be that there are plausible reasons for the particular arrangement of the four sections and for the use of the stream of consciousness technique in the first three and not in the fourth. Jean-Paul Sartre's comment that the moment the reader attempts to isolate the plot content “he notices that he is telling another story” indicates the need for such an assumption, not only for any light that may be thrown on The Sound and the Fury but for any insight that may emerge concerning Faulkner's method and achievement.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 69 , Issue 5 , December 1954 , pp. 1017 - 1037
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954

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References

1 “Time in Faulkner: ‘The Sound and the Fury’,” La Nouvelle Revue française, lii (June 1939) and liii (July 1939), transl. and rptd. in William Faulkner: Two Decades of Criticism, ed. F. J. Hoffman and O. W. Vickery (East Lansing, 1951), p. 180.

2 Lawrence E. Bowling, “The Technique of ‘The Sound and the Fury’,” Kenyon Rev., x (Autumn 1948), reprinted in Two Decades, p. 177. At this point I should like to acknowledge my general indebtedness to Bowling's article. Rather than duplicate his points, I have assumed them to be established beyond the need for further elaboration. Hence my analysis largely deals with elements which he has not considered.

3 The Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces, ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York, 1934), p. 154.

4 The Sound and the Fury (New York: Modern Library, 1946), p. 37, Faulkner's italics. Subsequent references to this edition will be indicated in the text.

5 See Bowling, Two Decades, pp. 170-171, for a discussion of some technical similarities in the two sections.

6 Two Decades, p. 186.

7 Sumner C. Powell, “William Faulkner Celebrates Easter, 1928,” Perspective, ii (Summer 1949), 213, speaks of Jason as a comic hero, but he fails to differentiate between Jason's view of himself and his actual function in the third section and in the book as a whole.

8 The Stockholm Address.