The Postmodern Narrative Study Of William Faulkner’s Works

William Faulkner (1897-1962) was one of the most important and mostinfluential novelists in the twentieth century. In his lifetime, he composed19novels,nearly one hundred short stories, and several screenplays. In his works, he does anin-depth exploration of the psychological and spiritual world of southerners byskillfully combining the subjects of modernism and realism from a20thcenturyperspective. His lineage Yoknapatawpha novels tell of the decline of three southernaristocratic families: Compson, Satoris, and Maxlin, and the rise of the Snopes family,which represents the bourgeois upstart. Faulkner frequently focuses on the fate ofsoutherners and the spiritual world in which they live so that he can expose andcastigate the Southern society·s moral decay and social chaos.The research on Faulkner and his works has had a history of more than80yearsboth abroad and in China. Many researchers started with the internal aspects ofFaulkner’s works, such as his works’ narrative strategy, text form, language and so on.In1970s, along with the emergence of some new western literary criticism methods,the study of Faulkner and his works broke through the barriers of internal research,and was extended to the external aspects. The peak of the study is in1980s. Lots ofvaluable books and papers were published mostly using the traditional methods suchas theme analysis, historical criticism and social ethics research, formalism methodetc. Later, some critics boldly put semantics, semiotics, aesthetics, phenomenology,psychology and other research achievements into literary criticism, structuralism,deconstruction, and psychological analysis, feminist criticism and reader responseapproach to the study of Faulkner. Many experts and scholars published some bookson the themes of Faulkner’s biography, Faulkner and the southern society and modernracism, popular culture, as well as its theme, characters, writing skills and languagecharacteristics. Scholars also use literary criticism theories of different periods toanalyze Faulkner’s works. It is worth mentioning that, although many domestic and foreign scholars on Faulkner and his works are multifaceted, and have made aresearch from multi angles and even cross disciplinary, research from the post modernnarrative angle has been in a state of little interest. The reason, in the author’s opinion,mainly is that of the complexity of postmodern narrative theories and that of theinstability of its development.Theories of postclassical narrative, which is also known as postmodern narrative,were born in the mid-1980s in North America, and reached their climax in the1990s.With contextual narratology as the main research focus, its studies cover postmodernhistorical narratology, feminist narratology, rhetoric narratology, cognitive narratology,and other narrative theories and genres. A characteristic of a postclassical narrativetheory is to regard narrative works as cultural products of context as well asconsidering the relevance of literary works’ creation context and acceptance context.While analyzing literary works, postmodern narratologists focus on the readers’ activefunction and how historical and social contexts affect a works’ creation andacceptance. The main researchers in this field include James Phelan, Michael Kearns,Wallace Martin, David Herman, Bortolussi Dixon, and Peter Dixon.In this paper, starting with a basis of cultural studies, anthropology, archetypalcriticism, mythology, and other disciplines, the author analyzes Faulkner’s worksthrough the theories of postmodern historical narratology, rhetoric narratology, andcognitive narratology. In addition, the author also incorporates a large number ofprevious studies in order to try to make the existing research on Faulkner morecolorful. The research methods of this paper include descriptive approaches ofphenomenology along with approaches of historical research and theoreticalconstruction which combine the texts.This paper can be divided into five parts. The first part is an introduction. In thissection, the author focuses on Faulkner’s writing characteristics, current researchstatus both at home and abroad, and the research status and characteristics ofpostmodern narratology. Finally, the author discusses the research ideas and methodsof this thesis. The second part of this thesis is actually the first chapter of it. In this chapter,from the perspective of postmodern historical narratology, the author elaborates on thecultural context of Faulkner’s writings and the trope interpretation of the text. In thesection on cultural context, the author mainly illustrates the impact that Faulkner hadon southern culture, such as the Southern Complex, religious awareness, the tragicsense of southern culture, and the southern literary tradition. In the section on theinterpretation of the text, the author expounds the trope interpretation of the text fromthe angle of metaphor, metonymy, and irony.The third part is the second chapter of this paper. It explores the works ofrhetorical narrative research on Faulkner. In this chapter, the author focuses on twoaspects: the narrative process and the narrative judgment of some of Faulkner’s works.In the narrative process section, the author uses Phelan·s rhetorical narrative theoryand analyzes Faulkner’s works in two aspects: local conflicts and global conflicts, andstable factors and unstable factors. The last part of this section explores the texts fromthe perspective of an implicit narrative process, paying homage to a narrative theorywhich was developed by the famous Chinese scholar Shen Dan. In the narrativejudgment section, the author focuses on three narrative judgments in Faulkner’s works:interpretation judgment, ethical judgment, and aesthetic judgment.The fourth part of this paper is the third chapter. In this chapter, the authoranalyzes Faulkner’s works through the lens of cognitive narratology. Given thecomplexity of this view and the absence of systematic theories of cognitivenarratology, the author selected two main aspects to elaborate on. The first is theGarden Road narrative in "The Sound and the Fury." Garden Road narrative refers tothe intricate storyline and sometimes even the wrong information that an authorprovides in a text for the purpose of arousing the readers’ curiosity and interest, whichincreases the aesthetic appeal of the novel.Psychological narrative is a new form of literary analysis which adopts anexperimental method for literary criticism and provides an analytical basis for itsrelation to science. However, due to its founders Bortolussi and Dixon’s underdevelopment of this theory, it is far from being well developed. The discussionin this paper is, thus, inevitably understated and ambiguous on one or two occasions.The author has struggled to avoid this problem in the writing process, and because ofthe author’s limited capacity there is still quite a lot that needs to be corrected andsupplemented. Therefore, corrections and criticisms are both very welcomed. It isworth mentioning that Bortolussi and Dixon are continuing with this research focussince the feasibility and effectiveness of this test method for literary criticism needsfurther confirmation.The fifth part of this paper is a summary. In the conclusion, the authoremphasizes the main focus of this paper and points out its weaknesses. Also, theauthor discusses the current problems with this research and analyzes the mainreasons for them. The author also points out her plans for future research and explainsher research methods.