A Study On The Cross-media Narratives Of William Faulkner’s Absalom,Absalom!

Faulkner,the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949,has made outstanding contributions to the literary endeavors of mankind.With the adroit employment of modern media such as architecture,music,film and television,his novels demonstrate the strong points of multifarious arts media.This paper is designed to interprets the unique narrative features on the basis of the comparison of narrating skills and other arts medium of Faulkner’s novel in a thorough way from the view of Cross-media and digs into the literary functions and aesthetic significance of those narrating skills.The introductory section first clarifies the concepts of media and Cross-media narratives,introduces Faulkner’s writing techniques and the current state of research on his works,and analyzes the innovative and practical significance of interpreting Absalom,Absalom! from a cross-media perspective.The second chapter explores the experiences of The Sutpens at the Sutpen’s Hundred,the narrative function of architectural imagery in shaping the characters’ images and revealing their psychological states,and the construction of the characters’ identities from the spatial art of architecture in a holistic and comprehensive manner.Inspired by geospatial narrative techniques,Faulkner recreates the spatial scenes of regional and cultural architecture in the novel,giving the architectural space a literary narrative and visually externalizing the inner emotions and psychology of his characters into concrete visual elements,which provides a desirable way to view the psychological state of the characters through construction of geospatial space.Chapter Three focuses on Faulkner’s musical approach to composition,straddling the textual medium proper and pursuing the aesthetic effects and narrative energy of the musical medium,sorting out the synchronic and desynchronic features of literature and music,and grasping the familial similarities between them as important members of the great family of arts.As to the narrative strategy and emotional expression of Absalom,Absalom!,Faulkner arranges the characters’ face-to-face encounters,following the circular movement of music.The narratives of the four narrators are interlocked,forming a rich three-dimensional,interlocking counterpoint relationship,just like a melodious sonata.Although this novel always has a clear and harmonious main theme,its musical narrative reveals the depth of modern social life and the depth of modern people’s emotional consciousness that a simplistic and linearly structured narrative can hardly present.Chapter Four focuses on the scene dispatching and film montage editing techniques in the novel,with an eye on the innovative elements of Faulkner’s experimental creation by absorbing the film medium.Faulkner’s deft use of language and the portrayal of three-dimensional typical characters such as Sutpen through a single cinematic shot break through the traditional literary relationship of time and space,and the grouping of images achieves the effect of meaning multiplication,enriching the narrative technique and artistic connotation of his novel.Sound and picture,the basic factors under the visual narrative,create an effect similar to that of film.Faulkner transforms the challenge of visual art into his special writing technique,creating a perceptible,even more vivid than reality,visualized world.Based on the above analysis,the last part comes to the conclusion that William Faulkner properly borrows cross-media narrative techniques in creating Absalom,Absalom! which endows the novel a unique taste and ever-lasting appeal,and provides a new experimental form for contemporary novel writing.Based on the above analysis,the last part concludes that studying Faulkner’s Absalom,Absalom! in the context of cross-media narratives is an important entrance to a deeper understanding of Faulkner’s novel and a key path to understanding the interaction between Faulkner’s novel and other artistic media.In Absalom,Absalom!,the absorption and borrowing of narrative techniques from architecture,music,film and other arts innovates narrative perspective,narrative structure,and narrative time and makes the novel unique in terms of atmosphere creation,plot propulsion,characterization,and reading interest,providing a unique taste and lasting appeal with a new experimental form for contemporary fiction writing and a model for cross-media narrative studies of Faulkner’s works.This paper is expected to provide a reference and reveal a possibility for promoting the study of Cross-media narratives in Faulkner’s works and the study of contemporary Cross-media literary creation.