Fiction begot Fiction: An exploration of trauma in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury
Date
2012-09-21Author
Walling, Terriann
Type
ThesisDegree Level
MastersMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
“Fiction begot Fiction,” is a psychobiographical study of William Faulkner, which draws primarily on The Sound and the Fury for its evidence. It is not, strictly speaking, a study of Faulkner’s novel, since the questions it seeks to answer are biographical ones concerning Faulkner’s motivations for writing the novel, and the reasons for its famously elliptical style. Nor is it a conventional literary critical essay, even in the psychobiographical mode, since it relies heavily on red herrings, suspense, and a deus ex machina resolution. It is therefore most aptly considered as a specimen of creative non-fiction for which psychobiographical literary criticism provides the foundation. The project offers a defense of conjectural readings of characters’ fictive past traumas, drawn from the work of Esther Rashkin. The author offers her own justification for extending Rashkin’s character-focused approach to the uncovering of an authorial trauma that isfigured elliptically in the traumatic and post-traumatic struggles of the novel’s fictional characters. The project provides a provocative “riff” on psychobiographical criticism.
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)Department
EnglishProgram
EnglishSupervisor
Clark, HilaryCopyright Date
October 2012Subject
William Faulkner
Trauma
Sound and the Fury
Trauma Theory
Esther Rashkin
Nicolas Abraham
Cathy Caruth