The Realistic Novel and the Creation of Literary Characters: William Faulkner‘s The Sound and the Fury
Żaneta Nalewajk (University of Warsaw)
The full version of this article is available in Polish in the printed version of Tekstualia and in the on-line subscription.
The article discusses William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury with respect to the construction of the literary character as a refl ection of major conventions of the novel in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. One important issue concerns the trustworthiness of characters-narrators, which has to do with the modernist transformations of novelistic techniques. Another important question concerns the identity of the characters- -narrators as it emanates from their motivations and self-projections. Finally, there is the problem of the dependence of identity on situational parameters and contextual factors. The character’s identity is not essentialist and independent, it does not exist in itself and for itself, but is strictly relational and thus shaped through a connection to the other, both in the micro- and the macrosocial sphere. Lat but not least, the article addresses the limited nature of individual cognitive efforts: the knowledge, which the characters communicate, refl ects their discontinuous perception of the surrounding world.
The sample of Polish version of this article is available here: https://tekstualia.pl/files/ddba6dcf/nalewajk_z-kreacja_postaci_literackich.pdf
