Title: The Art of Time used in William Faulkner’s THE SOUND AND THE FURY
1.The Purpose of the Study :
Time and space are two of the forever themes of our human beings. Everyone has his/her own view about time, so do writers. Writers like to express their view of time in a more different way. Especially from the 20th century, the worldwide literature has come into Modernism and post-modernism time. Writers are even more willing to express time in new ways. Among all the writers, William Faulkner, who won the Nobel Literature Price in 1949, is one of the greatest writers deal with time in an impressive way.
THE SOUND AND THE FURY is one of Faulkner’s most famous novel, which can best present Faulkner’s time value and art in dealing with time. However, most reviews haven’t tried to analysis this novel in a more philosophy way. As we known, philosophers often quarrel over time and space, then it’s easy for us to believe that the way Faulkner used to write this novel is more than a literature method, but a philosophy thought.
2. The Literature Review:
Modernism is the entirety of literature genres character in non-convention appears during the first half of the 20th century. As for characters on main ideas, modernism has a strong trend of culture-animadverting as well as an out-standing theme about alienation. And at the point of characters on art, modernism emphasize the present of inner life and mental reality, which stress more on subjectivity and introversion.
THE SOUND AND THE FURY is Faulkner’s most famous novel. This novel has a strong character of modernism, not only seen from its thoughts and connotation, but also from its writing technique and background, which mainly represent on its multi-view narrating methods, stream of consciousness and using of mythology.
In Faulkner’s novel, continued, one-dimensional time was totally broken and dismembered, and turned into NOW, which was still, indifferent, auto welled up and synchronic. Faulkner didn’t take the common writing measure, instead, he introduced the "story board", which usually adopted in shooting films or teleplays, to take place of the immanent, omnipotence and omniscient narrating method: Stories in every scene were narrated by the main character in every story board. However, unlike shooting films or teleplays──usually story boards shot first and then cutting, editing, processing and post synchronization, Faulkner broken the normal order of all the story boards first, and then he rearranged them according to his unique design. Further more, Faulkner tried his best to present the original style of every story board without clips. In the novel THE SOUND AND THE FURY, arranged as normal order, the order of the four chapters should be "1-2-3-4″, when-as Faulkner arranged the order as "3-1-2-4″,which totally threw the readers into confusion. At the same time, in every chapter, the space and time of the narrator was punctuated by switching scenes. This compeled the dazzling readers to follow the flowing consciousness of the narrator and keep associating tensely. As a result, readers walked into Faulkner’s space and time unawares.
The first three chapters of THE SOUND AND THE FURY has used a large number of switch of consciousness to narrate and depict characters. In the head of the narrator, thoughts leaped from one to another. Sometimes, Faulkner would change the font to remind the readers, while sometimes wouldn’t──readers have to depend on their own understanding to tell what is NOW and what is PAST. As the statistics shows, there are more than 200 Scene-Switches in the chapter of Quentin, while also more than 100 in the chapter of Benjy. There are several signals which will cause Scene-Switches:
- Saw a thing;
- Saw a person;
- At a word or sentence;
- Smelt a smell;
- Just transfers of thoughts.
Most time when using this method, Faulkner transferred the time from NOW to PAST, and then turns back from PAST to NOW. However, in some occasions, time may be transferred from NOW to PAST, and then turned to ANOTHER PAST. This method indicates that Faulkner had a special space and time consciousness which believes human’s PAST only contained in NOW. Of course, Faulkner didn’t use these writing methods by chance. Sartre has said, ‘if you consider these abnormalities as small ploys, you are totally wrong. Aesthetic ideas of novelist should always be traced back to their philosophical ideas. The duty of critics is to find out the writer’s philosophy before evaluate his writing methods. Definitely, Faulkner’s philosophy is the philosophy of time.’ Faulkner believed what afflicts humans is the impossibility to get rid of the shackle of time. He’s said via the character in his novel: ‘…A person is the summary of his misfortune. One day, you may think misfortune will be boring, but time is your misfortune…’. This, Sartre believed, is the real theme of the novel THE SOUND AND THE FURY. Indeed, the space and time consciousness Faulkner shows in this novel is the real meaning of the story.
Faulkner has a profound comprehension about the relationship between human beings and time, which was showed thoroughly in the chapter of Quentin. When Compson handing the watch to Quentin, his first son, he said, ‘ I give it to you not that you mat remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.’(William Faulkner. THE SOUND AND THE FURY. London: Everyman’s Library, 2000:64) Receiving the watch given by his father also suggests Quentin has followed up this kind of space and time value, which is also Faulkner’s own understanding about time and space. The decline history of the Compson family indicated Faulkner’s thinking and exploring about time and space──the most entitative things of the physical world. By Quentin’s suicide, Faulkner wanted to tell us the killer of the god is not others, but time: ‘That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels.’(Ibid, 65) It is time that fight against ourselves, that make us suffer from misfortune, that destroy our devoted traditions. Nevertheless, time itself is always dilatory and calm, even if you smashed up the watch or clock, it still keep going.
3.The Structure of the Thesis:
My thesis tries to analyze the methods Faulkner used in the novel as follows:
Introduction part is a brief introduction about stream of consciousness, modernism and the latest studies carried out home and abroad on the novel THE SOUND AND THE FURY.
In part I, I’ll introduce some concepts on time and philosophy as well as the background of the story.
Part II will make a brief introduction about some basic concepts about time philosophy so that I can explain Faulkner’s time value.
In part III, I will try to use some examples to explain Faulkner’s special way on dealing with time.
In conclusion, after a close study of the literary work, the thesis tries to explain how Faulkner dealt with time in a way different from traditional writers.
4.The Outline:
1. Introduction
2. Faulkner’s treatment about time
2.1 basic concepts about time
2.1.1 philosophical time value
2.1.2 multilevel disordered time structure
2.1.3 larger span of time
2.1.4 inflated treatment about chronaxie
2.2 detailed examples
3. Conclusion
5. Methods:
The comparative analytical case- study method will be adopted in this thesis. It will also use literature-study method, based on reading the large amount of the literature, the author will collect and arrange these materials, and give the theory support of the whole thesis.
6. Bibliography:
[1] 冯文坤. 论福克纳《喧哗与骚动》之时间主题. 外国文学研究, 2007年第5期.
[2] 福克纳. 八月之光[M].天津:百花文艺出版社,1998.
[3] 庞璃. 时间消逝于“喧嚣与骚动”. 广西大学学报(哲学社会科学版)[J], 2005(6).
[4] 王苗苗. 浅谈时间在福克纳作品《喧嚣与骚动》中的应用. 科技信息, 2007年 第 27期.
[5] 吴晓东. 从卡夫卡到米兰昆德拉. 三联书店. 2003
[5] 杨洋. 对位世界与对位式结构. 江西社会科学, 2002 年 第 11 期.
[6] 朱振武. 福克纳对审美心理时空的超越. 上海师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版 ), 2005年 7月 第 34卷 第 4期.
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