The Art Of Repetition

William Faulkner’s fame is especially based on his Yoknapatawpha series, in which William Faulkner explores the breakdown of the traditional values in American South and human being’s predicaments in the radical change of the contemporary society. As I Lay Dying is such a masterpiece of Yoknapatawapha series, which tells a simple story of a family with their quest and motivation---noble or selfish, trying every means to send Addie, the mother of the Bundren family, to Jefferson for burial to fulfill her wish. Faulkner employs many experimental skills here like stream of consciousness, multiple points of view, symbolism and so on, among which repetition is a distinct yet seldom-studied feature of As I Lay Dying. In the text, repetition occurs at various levels, including narrative structure, scenarios, sentences, phrases, words, images and so on.This present thesis aims to take J. H. Miller’s repetition as the theoretical perspective to explore the phenomena of repetition in the text to find out their functions in the text, and to detect how heterogeneity is created via the interaction of two forms of repetition to deconstruct the organic unity of the text and its linear narrative structure. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter One is to find out the repetition of the narrative structure, especially how repetition occurs via multiple points of view and a holy journey narrative structure and how the interaction of two forms of repetition breaks the organic unity and the linear structure of the story. Chapter Two attempts to detect the repetition at the level of scenario in the text:the author of the thesis takes three representative scenarios among the multiple repetitive scenarios to illustrate how repetition contributes to the theme and the heterogeneity of the text. Chapter Three intends to analyze the repetition of verbal elements in As I Lay Dying at the level of sentence patterns, phrases and words and how repetition deconstructs and reconstruct the text. Chapter Four hopes to probe into the repetition of images in the text and how repetition of certain images enhances the theme of the novel and how repetition creates the heterogeneity, de-centering the novel, and thus achieving its aim of deconstructing the text.The present research, by revealing repetition as a distinct feature in As I Lay Dying which is as noted for its fragmentation and stream-of-consciousness as most modernist novels, concludes that repetition functions uniquely to the themes, characterization and rhythmic effects of the novel. At the same time, the interweaving of Platonic repetition and Nietzschean repetition produces the heterogeneity, which breaks the traditional logocentrism that says either A or not A. The heterogeneity holds the reader from achieving the ultimate determinacy of the text and breaks the unity of the text, thus forming a deconstructionist reading of As I Lay Dying.