CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

Transcription

1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

2 Chapter One: Introduction 1.0. Preliminaries William Faulkner occupies a rare place in America's literary history as both a major modernist writer who assimilated and expanded upon the aesthetic and philosophical traits of the early twentieth century, and as a great Southern writer who depicted the South's cultural redefinition in the post-reconstruction era. However, Faulkner has always been a crucial figure amongst critics and a variety of theoretical perspectives have often surrounded his writing. In this study, the researcher will explore the elements of Modernism and Post-modernism in William Faulkner's fiction, demonstrating him as a central figure of Modernism, also try to find out the post- modem tendencies in his writings in order to show the similarities and differences between modernism and post-modernism. The present chapter will therefore, initiate the study with an overview of the literary movements, specify the objectives, state the research hypothesis and highlight the terms relevant to the study i.e. modernism and post-modernism. The chapter will also throw light on the fictional style of William Faulkner. It will also enhance understanding of the literary works related to the study.

3 Chapter One: Introduction 1.1. An Overview of Study Literary works not only tell a story by using character, plot and setting, but they also provide a window through which the reader can view the text as representative of its time. Each literary era boasts of a unique style and philosophy of literature, to which many authors of the day ascribe. William Faulkner is a well-known novelist whose fiction stands for literary Modernism. Modernism generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the 20'*' century. Modernist literature has attempted to move away fi-om the bonds of realist literature.it is often mentioned as a clear rejection of the optimism apparent in Victorian literature. The term strictly bounded to Modernism is Post-modernism.To define this term it can be said that Post-modernism is a system of observations and thoughts that denies absolutes. It has influenced theology, art, culture, architecture, society etc. In this study, following the postmodern theorists' point of view, the researcher tries to find out the similarities and differences between these two salient literary movements in the 20th century with reference to William Faulkner's novels.

4 Chapter One: Introduction 1.2. Objectives of Study This study attempts to cover the following objectives: The researcher tries to find out the major elements of Modernism and Post-modernism in William Faulkner's novels with special / ' > reference to representative novels: The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! A critical analysis of the author's novels will be done. The researcher attempts to analyze critically the context relevant to the subject. The novels will be analyzed systematically at different levels; form, themes, character, technique, style etc. The researcher intends to concentrate upon the modernist and postmodernist elements in the author's novels to bring out the close relationship between Modernism and Postmodernism and to show how these two are reflected in the works under study. The objectives of the study will be achieved in the light of the research analyses.

5 Chapter One: Introduction 1.3. Research Questions What has taken place during the 20th century in the fields of art, architecture, literature and criticism? What are the major features of the cultural movements labeled modernism and postmodernism? How far can the novels of William Faulkner who is a giant in the realm of American literature be evaluated in the light of modernist as well as postmodernist literature, culture and theory? This study tries to find out appropriate answers to the above questions, and also state a valuable hypothesis Statements of the Hypothesis Modernism and Post-modernism are two important literary movements in the 20th century. William Faulkner has been recognized as a central figure of international Modernism. However, his fiction can be understood in the light of Post-modernism as well.

6 Chapter One: Introduction 1.5. Methodology of the Research The mpthodology of this research is documentary. It has been chosen according to the aims, objectives, significance of research and research potentiauty. A limited use of comparative approach is necessary for sorting elements of modernism and postmodernism. Basically it is a textual approach meant to explore the role of modernism and post- modernism in Faulkner's fiction. In this research, the investigation starts with study of relevant terms such as Modernism, Enlightenment and Postmodernism.Then a brief study of the works of the author will be given and later the four novels of the author; The Sound and The fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! will be studied. Some previous reviews and critical studies related to the subject will also be studied and with the help of the whole data collected, the researcher will try to analyze the novels thematically, structurally, stylistically etc. and evaluate the author's novels in the light of Modernism and Post- modernism.

7 Chapter One: Introduction 1.6. Terms Relevant to the Research Modernism There is evidently a difficulty in assuming modernism and modernity as terms particularly relevant to the beginning of the 20th century. To try and define a period, one needs first to define these terms and thus determine whether such terms are accurate descriptions of the kind of social and artistic changes apparent at the beginning of the last century. Therefore, what exactly is modernism in relation to society, philosophy and literature? Broadly, it seems to relate to a change in the make-up of Britain and Europe due to the advent of industrialization. In particular this included the breakdown of the feudal system, urbanization and the rise in importance of technology, and communications, throughout the 19th century, continuing until the present day. As a result of these changes, mass production techniques were now developing and for the people this meant, as Virginia Woolf (1924, P.33) writes: "All human relations shifted - those between master and servant, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations

8 Chapter One: Introduction change there is at the same time a change in religion, conducts, politics and literature". This of course changed the social position of the artist, who was now given a different status to that previously acknowledged. This status defined an artist alone and alienated as well as an idealized person. Janet Wolf (1989, p. 10) offers a number of reasons for this: "The rise of individualism concomitant with the development of industrial capitalism, the second was the actual separation of the artist from any clear social group or class and from any secure form of patronage, as the old form of patronage was overtaken by the dealer/critic system, leaving the artist in a precarious position." It was through this that the artist became idealized. Due to this new position- the new relations between people, the emergence of the mass, dehumanization along with other events - that a kind of "rejection" was set up. Following the First World War, this rejection of the ideal, reached its peak as architects, painters, writers, musicians etc., all began to dispense everything that had happened previously, as the whole of

9 Chapter One: Introduction ^ 8 society seemed to be thrown into chaos, following the effects of the war. It is this rejection that can be seen as modernism. In this light a great example of a modernist writer and poet is T.S. Eliot who wrote "The Waste Land" to reflect the confusion and desperate feeling of post-war Europe which seemed to have lost its hopes and morals and had become a barren land. He described the urban as the "Unreal City", a fairly typical image used by the modernist artist. In fact, as Taylor and Winquist (2001,p.251) put it: "Modernism is the name given to the literary, historic, and philosophical period from roughly 1890 to 1950, which was marked by the belief in the unity of experience and the predominance of universals." To sum up, Modernism was the dominant force in 20th century Western art, music and literature. The dominant characteristics of modernism were the emphasis on experimentation, formalism and objectivism. Generally, the "Modem" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century and has been closely connected to modernism.

10 Chapter One: Introduction Enlightenment The "age of enlightenment" brought a huge shift in thinking, with people putting more and more confidence in science as an answer to practically everything. The dream that science would solve all questions led to the rejection of the institutions such as the church that were in power at that time. Jane Flax's (1978, p.41-42) article gives a good summary of the ideas of Enlightenment as below: 1. "There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal. 2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning. 3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower. 4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal. 5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead towards progress and

11 Chapter One: Introduction ^0 perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved. 6. Reason is the uhimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason. 7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right. 8. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified)." Associated with the above characteristics, modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more

12 Chapter One: Introduction H rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the more rationally it will function. Since modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modem societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Modernity as we stated earlier, provides the basic of the aesthetic aspect of Modernism. Since Modernism was the moving force of 20th century art, music and literature, a look at these areas should throw more light on the aspects of Modernism Modernism in art The modernist movement in art is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernist literature helped to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.

13 Chapter One: Introduction 12 Modenysm developed in the art world with its use of anti-form, desecration of established conventions and the use of witty images. The literary modernism refers to such art as Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Symbolism, Imagism, Dadaism and Surrealism. Broadly speaking, in Modernist era, artists became interested in science and industry to search for an answer or 'truth' to reality. Science allowed people to arrange things into little labeled boxes. So various groups of artists who emerged each with their own particular vision or narrative of the truth can be seen in this period. Examples of this can be found in Pablo Picasso's work, "Factory at Horta de Ebro'' (1990) where he reduced visual realities to their geometric shapes. Along with his friend Georges Braque he used this idea to give birth to Cubism. These two Cubists used the science of geometry to break down three-dimensional real objects to find their true forms on the canvas Literary Modernism Modernism in literature attempted to move away from the bonds of realist literature and introduced concepts such as disjointed timelines,

14 Chapter One: Introduction ^3 a marked pessimism, and a clear rejection of the optimism apparent in Victorian literature. In fact, a common motif in Modernist fiction is that of an alienated individual trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly urban and fragmented society. Tim Woods (1999) catalogues the main characteristics of modernism from a literary perspective as follows: 1. "An emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing and in visual arts as well an emphasis on 'how' rather than on 'what' is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing. In other words an emphasis on how someone sees something ~ Impressionism ~ not the thing they see itself. 2. A movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators and fixed narrative points of view. A movement away from the objective, godlike third person narrator, and towards the subjective voices of multi-narrators or a first person narrator such as the stories of Faulkner or Joyce.

15 Chapter One: Introduction i4 3. A blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary as in T.S. Eliot or EE Cummings and prose seems more poetic, as in Faulkner, Woolf or Joyce. 4. An emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials. 5. A rejection of the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.for example using vulgar pop music along side the uhra-revered Shakespeare, for both high and low, art is made by man, not handed down from the mountain." Modernists, seeing the destruction of the social order, see the world as a babel: fragmented, empty, a desert, a waste land, a chaos and a vacuum and it is their desire to rebuild meaning in that chaos to fill the void with a new type of art. Modernists have a purpose, that is, to interpret the chaos, to create order and to rebuild the universe. Modernism is tragic in its worldview. The world is fragmented, needing to be rebuilt, but impossible to rebuild. All order, while desired, is an illusion.

16 Chapter One: Introduction ^ 15 Another term which is intrinsically associated with Modernism is Post- modernism. Although one cannot draw a line of distinction between the two, it would not be out of place to explain the term Postmodernism apart from Modernism for a better understand of the two terms in isolation Post - Modernism Debates about postmodernism in philosophy and cultural theory have been extensive and varied since the late 1960's, often involving serious arguments. Therefore there is no definitive framework for what the postmodern should be. The definition of the modem is a key factor in forming a postmodern definition. The learned knowledge about postmodernism needs an exhaustive study of modernism, because the prefix "Post" implicates structural relation with modernism, either as a successor of modernism, as beyond or chronologically after modernism. There is a vast dialogue among theorists respecting Modernism and Postmodernism. Habermas (1999,) claims that there is no difference between these periods; and Postmodernism is a form of a conservative

17 Chapter One: Introduction ^^ reaction against the deficiencies of Modernism. From Habermas's view Postmodern means "end of Enlightenment" or in other words, "Postmodernism is a movement beyond the tradition of rationality that European modernity understood itself in the context of time" (Ibid).Therefore postmodernism is a part of modernism or synonym of anti- modernism and the critic of reason. Postmodern refers to a revolutionary shift in the system of values and practices that have been broadly codified in European life over several centuries. This revolutionary shift calls into question the stability of the structures. Post-modernism rejects the notion of universal truth and argues that meaning is often culturally constructed, relative and subjective. In art it is often associated with an eclectic style and self-referentiality. In this sense, postmodernism is a reaction against formalism and the concept of universal truth; it finds that "truth"- socially acceptable beliefs-is usually a cultural construction, and therefore highly subjective. As a matter of fact. Post-modernism is a rejection of the Enlightenment's ideas of reason, objectivity, and a knowable self. It rejects the idea of a knowable, reasonable world, based on workable

18 Chapter One: Introduction 17 systems. It rejects science as the final answer. But unlike Modernism, it neither views this as tragedy, nor does it seek to reform the system in order to create order out of this chaos. It is not seeking a solution. It is simply reporting what is, what might be, what could be, what isn't but maybe should be. Postmodernism tries to see all sides. It is like structuralism. A novel is not just what the author says it is. It has meanings which the author is not aware of. It has meaning for the reader, it has a contextual meaning, a social meaning, a historical meaning, an economic meaning, a gendered meaning. And these meanings may contradict each other. All contradictions are swallowed up in a cloud of unknowing. The text-the physical book-is not the end of the work. The novel is essentially created anew each time it is read or studied; at the same time, there is nothing but the physical object in front of you. Context, personal history, anything will color the way you read a text; and it is a power play for someone to say that your interpretation is fundamentally wrong, since in the end, you are the only one who really knows what you are talking about, what you are experiencing when you read the text. The same reaction, the same interpretation, can be applied to anything. For

19 Chapter One: Introduction ^8 instance, Greenberg.C. (1979) in his lecture gives the following parable for a better understanding of the term: "All the religions of the world went out one day into a field: The Jew, the Muslim, the Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu-everyone. And they sat in a circle. In the center of the circle sat God. And everyone saw God, but no one saw him from the same angle, or the same part of God. But they all saw the same God. But there's a truth in there that, no one sees anything quite the same way. There are innumerable reasons for this, as many reasons as there are variations of DNA. And so, the postmodernist, realizing this, often rejects a distinct definition of anything. All truths are true, even though they contradict each other. Therefore, formalism is dismissed as constraining, a false barrier against creativity." Rennes Descartes said, "I am thinking, therefore I am." To him 'thinking' proves you exist. Postmodernism says, "Well, how do you know you're not wrong? What exactly is thought? Is thought radically different fi-om any other function? What is thought that we supposedly do it, and rocks and trees don't? Is it because we can demonstrate

20 Chapter One: Introduction 19 through movement? But then, Postmodernism goes a step further and says, "Does it even matter if we exist?" The French philosopher, Jean Francois Lyotard was one of the famous thinkers of the twentieth century in postmodern discussions. "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on knowledge " written by him in 1979 is one of the important works in postmodern arguments, and it has been called the manifesto of postmodernism. According to Lyotard (1979), postmodernism is "an unquestionable part of modem". Lyotard was the first thinker who recommends the term "grand narrative " in the definition of modernism and describes it as a kind of story that underlies, gives legitimacy, and explains the particular choices of an action. Lyotard (1979, p.4) states that "Grand narrative is foundational and thus to be avoided. A grand narrative (or metanarrative) is a narrative form which seeks to provide a definitive account of reality." Postmodernism sees that any society can be held together through the use of "master narratives" - what Derrida calls the totality of a

21 Chapter One: Introduction ^ 20 system. In this master narrative, the society, the state, the reugion, the race, takes on the role of protagonist in a coherent narrative. Furthermore, postmodernism rejects the meta-narrative for the micro narratives. It looks at a small situation and attempts to give all sides. It realizes that the universe is too chaotic and contradictory to attempt to put a "grand scheme" on it. Restriction is the one thing that Postmodernism can be said to be against. Postmodernism is an acknowledgement that, though there may be a reality, it exists outside human understanding. In this way, think that are you the same person you were when you were five? Ten? Twenty-one? No. The truth for yourself is constantly changing. The idea of a constant self, of an ego, is false. It implies stability, it implies a personal meta-narrative. It makes one unable to adapt, to take on new ideas. Having taken a general overview of the term"postmodemism", we will now proceed to bring out the relation of postmodernism with literary arts.

22 Chapter One: Introduction ^^ Postmodernism and the Literary Arts It is in the field of literary studies that the term "postmodernism" has received widest usage and most vexed debate. There have been many attempts to theorize the consequences and manifestations of postmodernism for literature. Here, an attempt is made to explore the extent to which the term "postmodernism" has been implicated in literary studies, particularly in relation to fiction. As the name implies, Postmodernism in art is directly related to Modernism. It is difficult to pinpoint when literary postmodernism first came about, but the term became used widely amongst the art community during the 1970s, when its adoption by Lyotard and Jurgen Habermas first gave the idea of Postmodernism a broader circulation. Tim Woods (1999, p.65-66) summarizes some of the key characteristics of postmodern fiction as follows: 1. "The decentering of the subject by discursive systems, and the inscription of multiple fictive selves; 2. Narrative fragmentation and narrative reflexivity; narrative which double back on their own presuppositions;

23 Chapter One: Introduction An open- ended play with fonnal devices and narrative artifice, in which narrative self - consciously alludes to its own artifice, thus challenging some of the presuppositions of literary realism; 4. An interrogation of the ontological bases of and connections between narrative and subjectivity; 5. An abolition of the cultural divide between high and popular forms of culture, embracing all in a melange; 6. The displacement of the real by simulacra, such that the original is always already linguistically constructed." Since postmodernism is a movement which followed modernism, it becomes necessary to bring out the relation between the two Relation between Modernism and Post-modernism The prefix "post" suggests that any postmodernism is bound up with modernism, indeed with postfeminism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

24 Chapter One: Introduction 23 "The 'post' can be seen to suggest a critical engagement with modernism rather than claiming the end of modernism, or it can seem that modernism has been overturned, superseded or replaced".(ibid,p.6) Postmodernism, like modernism, follows rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject. But although postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude towards a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which have been lost in most of modem life saying that, art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, does not lament the idea of

25 Chapter One: Introduction 24 fragmentation and incoherence, but rather celebrates that. To a postmodernist, the world is meaningless. Therefore, one must not pretend that art can make meaning then, but just play with nonsense. Lyotard (1979,p.23) argues "totality, stability, and order are maintained in modem societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs". A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard. For Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in itself and a Utopian socialist world will evolve. A "grand narrative" can be considered as a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist. Postmodernism is the critique of grand narratives and every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" explains that "disorder" really is chaotic and bad, and that "order" really is rational and good. Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives"

26 Chapter One: Introduction ^^ which are stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability. This illustrates the confusion of what really constitutes a difference between modernism and postmodernism and one could almost argue that postmodernism is simply a repackaging of modernity in the face of lacking something new William Faulkner and His Works William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. He is regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century and was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature. Faulkner was known for an experimental style with meticulous attention to diction. In contrast to the minimalist style of his peer Ernest Hemingway, Faulkner's style is not very easy to read. His sentences are

27 Chapter One: Introduction 26 long and hypnotic; sometimes he withholds important details, or refers to people or events that the reader will not learn about until much later. Faulkner is lauded as the inventor of the "stream-of-consciousness" technique in American fiction. His work is known for literary devices like stream of consciousness, multiple narrations or points of view, and narrative time shifts. Faulkner's most celebrated novels include The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying {\930), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and The Unvanquished (1938). Faulkner was a prolific writer of short stories. His first short story collection. These IS (1932), includes many of his most acclaimed stories. Racism, class division, family as both life force and curse, are the recurring themes along with recurring characters and places. Faulkner used various writing styles. The narrative varies fi-om the traditional story telling {Light in August) to series of snapshots {As I Lay Dying) or collage {The Sound and The Fury).

28 Chapter One: Introduction 27 Absalom, Absaloml is generally considered Faulkner's masterpiece. It records a range of voices and vocabularies, all trying to unravel the mysteries of Thomas Sutpen's violent life. With The Sound and the Fury (1929), his first masterwork, Faulkner gained recognition as a writer. Its title originated fi'om the famous lines in Shakespeare's play Macbeth: "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing." While working at an electrical power station in a nightshift job, Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying (1930), about the illness, death, and burial of Addie Bundren. The book consists of interior monologues, most of them spoken by members of the Bundren family. The deceased herself has one monologue; her dying wish is to be buried in her home town. Struggling through flood and fire the family carries her coffin to the graveyard in Jefferson, Mississippi. Ultimately, the journey becomes Addie's curse. Cash, Addie's son, breaks his leg, Dewey Dell is raped in the cellar of a pharmacy. Addie is buried next to her father in the family plot. Darl's sanity dies with her mother and he is taken finally to an

29 Chapter One: Introduction 28 asylum. Anse, the father, appears with a woman, introducing her as the new 'Mrs Bundren' Fictional Method and Style of William Faulkner Faulkner was a self-conscious modernist. However, few writers, even among modernists, experimented with such a range of methods and styles as William Faulkner. He continually tested new novelistic forms. The Sound and the Fury (1929) has four sequential narrators. As I Lay Dying (1930) has a series of 59 alternating fragments. The Wild Palms (1939) follows two distinct narratives alternating chapter by chapter. In terms of genre, too, Faulkner was eclectic: As I Lay Dying is a short aesthetic tour-de-force; Sanctuary (1931), a hardboiled thriller, pitched to the marketplace. Go Down, Moses (1942) is something between a short story collection and a novel; Mosquitoes (1927) and Pylon (1935) are satiric portrayals of New Orleans subcultures, and The Reivers (1962), is a light comic novel. Broadly, Faulkner's writing styles are actually as various as his novelistic structures. As a stylist, Faulkner's name is associated with exceedingly long, unwieldy sentences.

30 Chapter One: Introduction 29 Many features of modernism and post modernism are seen in the works of William Faulkner. He demonstrates in his fiction many of the qualities typically attributed to literary modernism such as experimenting with narrative structures, temporal frameworks, narrative voices, and symbols and exploring inner consciousness as a major theme. As noted above, Faulkner developed a modernist style. His life and work might best be seen as a balancing act between tradition and modernity: moving between Mississippi and Hollywood. Although Faulkner is the representative of Modernist movement in twentieth century,"however his works can be evaluated in the light of postmodernism as well. Broadly speaking, there are three approaches to Faulkner's works; the first approach uses Faulkner's novels as a way to mark a period distinction between modernism and postmodernism, the second one sees postmodern tendencies in Faulkner's fiction, and the last reads Faulkner through the lens of postmodernist theory.

31 Chapter One: Introduction SO What follows hence is a review of the previous works done on this subject. It is presented to have a better understanding for analyzing Faulkner's novels in a modernist as well as postmodernist approach Literary Review There is a considerable body of literature which describes and analyzes William Faulkner's works in the light of Modernism and postmodernism. This part of study presents a short review of literature and presents different perspectives in analyzing Faulkner's writing. One of the major books illustrating modernist aspects in William Faulkner's writing is William Faulkner: the Making of a Modernist by Daniel J. Singal in Daniel J. Singal (1997), a well-known historian, argues convincingly that Faulkner's artistic greatness lay in his ability to liberate himself from the outmoded 19th-century Victorian culture and to accommodate his art to modernism that was replacing it. Taking the reader from Soldier's Pay (1925) to The Mansion (1958), Singal shows Faulkner's conversion, from unity and stability to an acceptance of diversity, change, and immersion.

32 Chapter One: Introduction ^ ^1 In fact, William Faulkner occupies a rare place in America's literary history as both a major modernist writer who assimilated and expanded upon the aesthetic and philosophical breakthroughs of the early twentieth century, and as a great Southern writer who depicted the South's cultural redefinition in the post-reconstruction era. Singal examines these dual dimensions of Faulkner in his lucidly written and coherently argued book. Furthermore, Jean Paul Sartre (1955) in his essay investigates William Faulkner's Metaphysics of Time. Faulkner's clock-based or chronological metaphysics of time found in The Sound and the Fury is the key point of Sartre's criticism of this work. His main criticism that the novel's metaphysics of time leaves its characters with only pasts and no futures, led some Faulkner scholars to seek the future in it while providing their own interpretation of time in Faulkner's work. For example Justin Skirry (2001) in ''Sartre on The Sound and the Fury" attempts to provide an expanded interpretation by first elucidating Sartre's criticisms of Faulkner's chronological metaphysics found in his original essay, and then analyzing each of the novel's four main sections under Sartre's theory of temporality and emotions.

33 Chapter One: Introduction 32 As we know, Faulkner's text is very difficult. There are long sentences, which often extend as much as one page or two pages in length, Faulkner's rare poetic diction, mysterious characterizations, events represented by disconnected time sequence, and difficulties in finding out what really happens in his discourse, are excellent reasons to have the many handbooks, introductory books and pamphlets concerning Faulkner's writings. The 1960s, especially after Faulkner's death in 1962, saw a flood of writings about Faulkner and his literary works, and many scholars published handbooks and glossaries on Faulkner's writing, to help readers to understand Faulkner's fiction and his fictional kingdom, Yoknapatawpha County. Some representatives among them are as follows: K. W. Robert and Marvin Klotz (1963) published the first comprehensive guide to Faulkner's characters. At the same time, Margaret P. Ford and S. Kincaid (1963) in their Who's Who in Faulkner attempted to provide a considerable guide to the characters that is still one of the best comprehensive studies of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha country with a usefiil index to characters.

34 Chapter One: Introduction ^? It is true that the primary aim of such handbooks was to provide for readers standard approaches to Faulkner's works which had been interpreted by ideological or moralistic criticism as well as to help in understanding Faulkner's fictional world. But the publication and study of biographical and literary materials and sources about William Faulkner, for over the last thirty years, have made these handbooks and introductory books of the 1960s, seem obsolete. Thus, Robert W. Hamblin and Charles A. Peek's (1999) who authored A William Faulkner Encyclopedia would seem to be just what is needed now. However, it is quite different fi-om the older handbooks and glossaries and it does not construct a system of knowledge about Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha.The Encyclopedia however, takes into full consideration the significant changes in political and cultural discourse and context from the mid 1980s and attempts to deconstruct the traditional understanding of Faulkner's fiction based on its Southern background and the creation of the Yoknapatawpha saga. Moreover, Linda W.Martin (2002), in her edition, brings together the best literary criticism on Faulkner fi-om the last six decades, detailing the responses to his still-controversial novels. By focusing on

35 Chapter One: Introduction 34 the criticism rather than the works, Linda Wagner-Martin shows the primary directions in Faulkner's influence on critics, writers, and students of American literature today. This invaluable volume reveals the patterns of change in literary criticism, while exploring the various critical streams such as language theory, feminism, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis that have elevated Faulkner's work to the highest rank of the American literature. Robert W. Hamblin, the professor of English and the director of the Center for Faulkner Studies and Ann J. Abadie (2005) present the thoughts of ten noted Faulkner scholars who spoke at the twentyseventh annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi in their book "Faulkner in the Twenty First Century". In this conference, Theresa M. Towner (Ibid) attacks the traditional classification of Faulkner's works as "major" and "minor" and argues that this causes the neglect of other significant works and characters. Barbara Ladd and Deborah Cohn (Ibid) invoke the relevance of Faulkner's works to "the other South," postcolonial Latin America, and investigate them from a postcolonial perspective.

36 Chapter One: Introduction 35 Leigh Ann Duck (Ibid) finds an inability within the tragic fates of the characters as Quentin Compson, and Rosa Coldfield, to cope with painful memories and examines the use of the future tense and Faulkner's growing skepticism of history as a linear progression. She states that in Faulkner's South, and indeed the United States as a whole, the question of racial identification tends to overpower all other issues. Cynthia C.Scott (2006) reviews and analyzes the similar themes of early 20th century modernism in William Faulkner's "Go Down Moses" and Richard Wright's short story "The Man Who Was Almost A man ". The writer details the plots and main characters in both works of writing. This paper discusses the style of both novels which revolve around the morals and manners of the old south in America. He states and explains why the tales are neither retrospective nor romantic in nature; rather, both authors use the decaying social morals of the southern region of the U.S. to define 20th century modernism. Both novels deal with racial issues that were prevalent in the early 20th century. He examines how both short stories contain an estrangement of place, in which the main male characters, Dave and Samuel, in both novels cannot find a home in either the north or south. The writer

37 Chapter One: Introduction ^ ^^ explores the reasons that, for both Samuel and Dave the world is a violent place that offers only a purposeless flight as an alternative to the prejudices of the south. Scott examines why at the end of both tales neither man is complete. Similarly, Philip M. Weinstein (2001) in his essay contrasts realism and modernism and finds that the theories of Nietzsche and Freud are helpful in illuminating the cultural transition fi-om realism to modernism and discusses the ways that The Sound and the Fury embodies the modernist spirit. John N. Duvall (1996) the scholar, famous for his essay on Faulkner and post-modernism also focuses on gender, matters and places of The Sound and the Fury within a modernist context: the parallel historical development of psychoanalysis and the discourse of literary modernism. Duvall explains how he uses T. S. Eliot's writing to put Faulkner's main characters, especially Quentin Compson, into the modernist context of male anxiety about themselves and male hostility towards women. He moves beyond the Faulkner novel to other

38 Chapter One: Introduction ^ 37 modernist texts to focus on the significance of gender issues for notions of American community. Furthermore, Heather A. Alumbaugh (2005) in his dissertation analyzes the regionalist writing of the high modernists Gather and Faulkner, and in doing so it redefines the history and nature of American modernism. To this end, he describes the strategies of American regionalist modernism which are consistent in certain novels by these authors and which include the following: the representation of region as place; the use of region to establish limitations; the representation of "failure" as paradigmatic for how individual characters negotiate the imperatives of region; the consistent deployment of modernist techniques; and the construction of the region distinct from the nation. A concern for the authors is the manner in which region plays a decisive role in the construction of identities that give structure to gender, sexuality and race; as a result, they are equally preoccupied with how region can operate. As a regionalist critique of modernism and as a modernist investigation, this dissertation has three larger implications: it concretely describes a national component to modernism, which is evaluated most commonly as a transnational

39 Chapter One: Introduction 38 phenomenon; it changes the American canon by destabilizing the categories of "major" and "minor" literatures; and, it underscores the importance of region to the ongoing construction of "American-ness" itself. William Faulkner has always been a crucial figure of modernism and post-modernism amongst critics. John N. Duvall and Ann J, Abadie (1999) composed a book named ''Faulkner and Postmodernism: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, "containing essays on postmodernism in William Faulkner from the 1999 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference held at the University of Mississippi,. In fact, since the 1960s, William Faulkner, Mississippi's most famous author, has been recognized as a central figure of international modernism. But will Faulkner's fiction be understood in relation to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as well as James Joyce's Ulysses? The critics taking part in this conference examine William Faulkner and his fiction in the light of postmodern literature, culture, and theory. The volume explores the variety of ways Faulkner's art can be used to measure similarities and differences between modernism and postmodernism.

40 Chapter One: Introduction ip Essays in the collection fall into three categories: those that use Faulkner's novels as a way to mark a period distinction between modernism and postmodernism, those that see postmodern tendencies in Faulkner's fiction, and those that read Faulkner through the lens of postmodern theory's contemporary legacy, the field of cultural studies. In order to make their particular arguments, essays in the collection compare Faulkner to more contemporary novelists such as Ralph Ellison, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, and Kathy Acker. In other words, a variety of theoretical perspectives, frame the work in this volume, from Fredric Jameson's pessimistic sense of postmodernism's possibilities to Linda Hutcheon's conviction that cultural critique can continue in postmodernism through innovative new forms such as metafiction. Despite the different theoretical premises and conclusions of the individual authors of these essays, Faulkner and Postmodernism proves once again that in the key debates surrounding twentieth-century fiction, Faulkner is a crucial figure.

41 Chapter One: Introduction 40 Molly Hite (1999) talks about two famous novels, the first, the monument of modernist innovation, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, the second, the most important postmodernist novel written in the U.S., Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.l\)is essay suggests that a way to relate modernism to postmodernism in literary narratives might be to consider the relations between design and paranoia. Another essayist Doreen Fowler, in his essay states the difference between the two novels in terms of character's subjectivity demonstrating Faulkner's view of the patriarchal subject. Similarly, Ihab Hassan, in his essay explores Faulkner's postmodern way of thinking about self-creation. He describes Faulkner's attitude towards the problem of human subjectivity. Moreover, Philip Weinsten in his essay regarding Faulkner and Post-modernism talks on Joe Christmas's pre-postmodem subjectivity in Light in August. Whereas postmodernism clarifies that identity is a mere "mask," Christmas cannot get away fi-om the world where the subject is captured by culturally "constructed" identity. In addition, in his master's thesis entitled ''Forget Jerusalem: William Faulkner's Hyperreal Novel", Michael Joseph Germana (1999)

42 Chapter One: Introduction 41 explores the relation between Modernism and Postmodernism as well as between literature and theory by examining the works of two writers: master novelist William Faulkner, and the famous postmodernist, Jean Baudrillard. This paper examines Faulkner's eleventh novel; If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, as a postmodern text which, shows the transition from Modernism to Postmodernism. In his paper, Michael treats each author's work as a lens through which to view the other. The result is a re-vision of Faulkner's social philosophy. Tamsen Douglas (1995) makes use of Linda Hutcheon's concept in comparing ''Lie Down in Darkness " and ''The Sound and the Fury" to transform them into representations more applicable to the postmodern condition. The differences between "Lie Down in Darkness " and "The Sound and the Fury " can be seen as paradigmatic of the differences between modernism and postmodernism. Andrea D.Kwasny (1992) in his dissertation studies Faulkner's construction of the Southern subject in As I Lay Dying, Go Down, Moses, Light in August, and The Sound and the Fury form the modernism viewpoint. To him, Faulkner's Southern subject seems to

43 Chapter One: Introduction 42 emerge as a result of including "Other" into "self by constructing him/her as internalized subject. From the viewpoint of postmodernism, however, Faulkner's "Other" representation questions the project of modernity or the formation of subject through totalizing binaries. "Faulkner: Achievement and Endurance Selected Papers, International Conference on William Faulkner" edited by Tao Jie is a collection of twenty papers presented in the International Faulkner Symposium at Peking University, November, "A Study in Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury and Absalom! Absalom", written in 2006 reviews and critiques William Faulkner's novels "The Sound and the Fury" and "Absalom, Absalom!" The author maintains that both novels share the same objective to demonstrate the way in which people perceive and interpret past events. Furthermore, both works forgo traditional, chronological writing, opting instead for stream of consciousness. The paper explains that these techniques, coupled with strong characterization, reveal not only the novels' major themes but they also underlie some other smaller hidden themes. In this paper it is stated that as with many of Faulkner's writings, 'The Sound and the Fury' and 'Absalom, Absalom!' share the common prevailing

44 Chapter One: Introduction 43 theme of the destruction of the South or society post-civil War. Another important theme, but only within 'The Sound and the Fury' is that of time, one's perception of time, and the effect of time. However, reading deeper into the novels reveals several other important if not prevalent themes, for instance the destruction of the family and of the self The novels are essentially one and the same, despite the obvious differences such as the story being told differently or the use of different characters with the exception of Quentin. Furthermore, many of the events, as well as the characters, within 'The Sound and the Fury' are merely reflections of those presented m Absalom, Absalom! Furthermore, regarding the narrative technique in Faulkner's writing, which is a crucial issue, various books, papers and dissertations have been prepared and published. For example, Dorothy J. Hale (1997) in "^5 / Lay Dying's Heterogeneous Discourse Novel: A Forum on Fiction " explores the relationship between the strategy of the narrative and the concept of self Through a variety of narrative discourse, the characters' self, confronts the authorial hegemony including the author itself, the public self, only to demonstrate that as long as an individual

45 Chapter One: Introduction 44 successfully remains in society, the originality of the self is always already compromised. Similarly, in his "Reflexivity in the Narrative Technique of As I Lay Dying." in 1990, he suggests that the reflexivity of the novel, the metafictional thematization of its own narrative peculiarities, reveals ^the formation of self-identity in the characters and readers: both of them can obtain a glimpse of "myself through the mirror of the Other. Furthermore, Jose Angel Garcia Landa (2004) has made a comparative analysis of the narrative technique of Absalom, Absalom! with three other novels.he introduces, discusses, and analyzes four different types of narration. He specifically compares and contrasts them in each of these novels. Garcia looks at how each of the classic novels uses a different form of narration to set the stage for the characters and to move the plot along. Each form of narration adds to the impact of the novel. He shows how Absalom, Absalom! is an excellent example of the forms of narration and how important it is to the art. In his paper, the author states that Absalom, Absalom! uses a stream of consciousness type of narration that includes the shifts in points of view and setting that can be unsettling to the reader. The