Harmony Out Of Involutions Stylistic Idiosyncrasies Of The Sound And The Fury

William Faulkner is renowned for his highly experimental style. It is largely due to his unique style and narrative techniques, together with the subject matters, that he is placed among the world classic writers. In his novels, he discards chronological order, and employs multiple narrators, long sentences and stream-of-consciousness technique.The Sound and the Fury is generally recognized as one of the most successfully innovative and experimental American novels. It marks the beginning of Faulkner's audacious efforts in his experimentation with style and techniques on which voluminous books, essays, notes and comments have been published. However, little elaborate research has been carried out on the lexical, syntactic and narrative idiosyncrasies of the novel and how they are aesthetically and artistically motivated. This dissertation is an attempt in this direction.It attempts to locate the lexical, syntactic and narrative idiosyncrasies of the novel, and then group similar features together. The examination and analysis of these idiosyncrasies have come to the following conclusions.In the case of lexical idiosyncrasies, Faulkner has skillfully adapted his style to each individual narrator to reveal his mental state and preoccupations: Benjy's small vocabulary of simple and concrete words reflects his mental limitation, inwardness and retardedness; Quentin's vocabulary of sophisticated and abstract words correlates with his level of intelligence and obsession; Jason's vocabulary of everyday words and colloquialism betrays his indignations and vulgarity.The research has also found that Faulkner is "obsessed" with lexical repetition. The repetition of adjectives, usually through synonyms, reflects his attempts to coming to some kind of meaning which he feels the existing English vocabulary fails to convey. The repetition of certain nouns is to highlight the concerns and obsession of the individual character: Benjy with fire and fire images, signifying his longings for love and tenderness; Quentin with time, implying his nostalgia for the past; and Jason with the family appearance and money, betraying his practical existence. The repetition of lexical units in the form of sentences as a chunk produces some emotional effects. The frequent recurrence and repetition of the same lexical units such as "Caddy smelled like trees" and "I was trying to say" in the first section of the novel help bring about the importance and dominant role of Caddy in Benjy's life: she is Benjy's pillar of physical and emotional need. It also betrays the coldness of the other Compson family members towards the idiot child.In the case of syntactic idiosyncrasies of The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner, like other fiction writers who usually try to deviate from the familiar conventional syntactic structure so as to best represent the theme of the works and to make the style as personal as possible, has undertaken extensive syntactic experiments with the English language.Faulkner's most noticeable syntactic experiments in The Sound and the Fury is to employ long sentences. The study has found that Faulkner constructs his long sentences by means of multiple devices, the most frequent of which are the use of the conjunction "and", embedding and appended grouping. His long sentence is meant to compress as much amount of time or life into one sentence, and to say everything between one Cap and one period. It also attempts to represent the aesthetic effect of continuity and fluidity, and to represent Faulkner's idea of overall theme of intricate interrelations.In the case of narrative idiosyncrasies, Faulkner is famous for his use of myriad narrators in a novel. Each narrator in The Sound and the Fury provides readers with only a different perspective to view the Compson family, and he/she emphasizes the events in the Compson history that have had the greatest impact upon his/her own life. He/She tries to establish him/herself and undermine other narrators. None of the narrations is authoritative or conclusive, and none is a cumulative progression towards conclusion. Instead, they are often supplementary and sometimes contradictory. Readers must join in the philosophical speculation and investigation by examining the narrators, and place the narrations against the different backgrounds. By forcing readers to contribute their understanding and to participate in the search for truth, Faulkner broadens the meaning of the novel so that it can sustain different interpretations.The research concludes that the lexical, syntactic and narrative idiosyncrasies in The Sound and the Fury are not the result of Faulkner's lack of formal education as many early criticisms have contended, but are artistically motivated, and carefully organized and planned.