Metaphoric Principia As Employed In William Styron's Lie Down In Darkness

William Styron (1925 -) was pigeonholed as a successor of William Faulkner since the publication of his first novel Lie Down in Darkness in 1951. Many critics put him into the category of American Southern writers. However, William Styron himself does not think so. This thesis sets out to prove that as a writer of human conditions, William Styron shows a philosophical orientation and artistic tendency diverse in origin rather than purely Southern, for he made a serious metaphoric exploration, as seen in Lie Down in Darkness, to divest himself of the substantial Southern traits represented by William Faulkner. Such an effort is typical in terms of his multi-sourced philosophy, Hellenic esthetics and theatrical narrative style. With regard to philosophical beliefs, he was influenced by both oriental and western philosophical doctrines, ranging from Chinese Taoism to Descarts'Dualism, Sartre's Existentialism and Nietzsche's "Overman"concept. As for aesthetic values, he is a disciple of classical literary masters, demonstrating a special preference for such prototypes as elements of Greek tragedies and Odyssean journeys initiated by the Greek bard, Homer. As far as narrative style is concerned, Styron takes advantage of the classical and Shakespearean theatrical devices in his treatment of theme, setting, plot, and characterization. Together with the modernist multiple-perspective and stream-of-consciousness techniques, he resorts to such practices as segmenting the story into parts corresponding to acts of stage production, employing fragmented internal monologues in imitation of asides and soliloquy, stringing together self-sufficient episodes like smaller plays inside the main play, and revitalizing the theme of life-death-rebirth cycle found in Shakespearean plays as well as drama throughout western literature.