Faulkner, William (Vol. 1) | Faulkner, William 1897–1962
Faulkner, William 1897–1962
Faulkner, a Southern American novelist, set his fiction in the imaginary Yoknapatawpha County. His best-known works are The Sound and the Fury, Sanctuary, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom! He won the Nobel Prize in 1949.
It may be summarily stated that Faulkner's use of formal arrangement of scenes in As I Lay Dying is a device for making it possible to introduce the thoughts of a great many characters without unduly confusing the reader. There are thirteen characters whose consciousnesses are represented in this short novel. This distinguishes it from all other stream-of-consciousness fiction….
Faulkner's chief unifying device in this novel is something else. It is a unity of action which he employs. In other words, he uses a substantial plot, the thing that is lacking in all other stream-of-consciousness literature…. It is the thing that carries As I Lay Dying and The Sound...
[The entire page is 4959 words long]
Navigate
