Between Demythologization and Transcendence: Faulkner’s Poetics of Historical Trauma
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34640/univmadeiracjhs1constandache
Keywords:
Faulkner, modernism, short prose, literary myth, YoknapatawphaAbstract
This paper offers a critical analysis of William Faulkner’s status as an unconventional novelist, examining how short prose decisively contributes to the construction of his mythopoetic universe. Building on Malcolm Cowley’s observation that Faulkner does not write traditional novels but rather fragments of a discontinuous macrotext, this study argues that narrative fragmentation—manifested in the rejection of linearity, the plurality of voices, and temporal distortion—constitutes the authentic expression of his literary modernism.
The analysis focuses particularly on the ways in which short stories such as The Bear and Spotted Horses, though formally autonomous, are later organically integrated into major novels, revealing a circular compositional strategy. The fictional Yoknapatawpha County is approached as a symbolic and mythical space in which memory, trauma, and history intersect within a nonlinear, stratified temporality.
In contrast to Hemingway’s stylistic economy, Faulkner’s discourse is marked by density, ambiguity, and progressive accumulation of meanings, embodying two opposing paradigms for representing reality. Iin Faulkner’s vision, myth no longer offers ontological stability but becomes fluid, shaped by the identity crisis of modernity. Through this lens, the paper examines Faulkner’s influence on narrative postmodernism and reconsiders the role of short prose as the generative nucleus of a tense, deeply original literary mythology.
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