William Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury'- an Exemplary Modernist Text

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Technical University of Darmstadt, language: English, abstract: William Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury' is considered 'one of the greatest [Modernist] novels of the 20th century' (Churchwell), but what exactly qualifies it as such? To answer this question I will start by looking at what Modernism can be defined or classified as which means looking at its historical background as well as stylistic and thematic characteristics. After having done so I will examine Faulkner's text in close comparison to these results and identify the commonalities along with the differences of theory and practice. In the process I will go into detail while analyzing some of the most striking characteristics of the novel in order to clarify their importance for Faulkner's work as a whole.