《美国文学hstory.docVIP

5.William Faulkner (1897-1962) life: America’s greatest novelist in the 20th century. He won Novel prize for literature in 1950. he never repeats himself, never repeats the same technique or theme in different works. He is a highly experimentalism, especially in his language. He developed the stream of consciousness to a new level and in his works he painted a literary history of the American South. Works: The Sound and Fury 1929 As I Lay Dying 1930 Light in August 1932 Absalom, Absalom 1936 Go Down, Moses 1942 major features: Faulkner used the South to talk about the violence and evil in all human beings. There are three emphases in Faulkner’s writing: on history and the problem of race, on folk humor of the South, and on horror, violence and the abnormal to arouse moral outrage. He presented grim pictures in general, but not pessimistic in viewpoint. Faulkner was a great avant-garde experimenter. He successfully advanced some modern literary techniques. he used the device of stream of consciousness he used multiple point of view and a circular form instead of a linear structure. He stressed authorial transcendence to avoid authorial intrusion in narrat5ion and characterization He used and original narrative method which often withholds or gives confusing information. The violation of chronology in the narrative structure is matched by a violation of everyday language habits in Faulkner’s prose style. His prose varies from colloquial, regional, to formal diction and cadences(声调)of American speech. “despair” and “doom” are the frequent motifs in a world of racial exploitation and violence, civil wars, macabre murders, suicides, labor pains, etc. Faulkner not only provided the reader with more than external events and details, he also probed the inner lives of those who are living in the South and trying to cope with the problems of a society in decline and transition. It is not only in his choice of images that Faulkner conveyed the mood, the atmosphere, the emo