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Fiction begot Fiction: An exploration of trauma in William Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury

Date

2012-09-21

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

ORCID

Type

Degree Level

Masters

Abstract

“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.

Description

Keywords

William Faulkner, Trauma, Sound and the Fury, Trauma Theory, Esther Rashkin, Nicolas Abraham, Cathy Caruth

Citation

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

Department

English

Program

English

Committee

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DOI

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