Essay Comparing Faulkner's The Sound And The Fury

Chapter One
Locating Faulkner in a Poststructuralist Matrix

The poststructuralist views on the relation between language and text are intricately linked to the deconstruction of the concept of speech in the metaphysical philosophy and hence cannot be confined to the critique of linguistics and structuralism. Since the term ‘deconstruction’ first entered the philosophical and theoretical debates via Jacques Derrida's publication in 1967 of three major works that established his prominence on the current intellectual scene, Of Grammatology, Speech and Phenomena and Writing and Difference , many critics have described deconstruction as germinal to our understanding not only of the key philosophical problems raised and addressed by Derrida, but

In the introduction to The Sound and the Fury (1929), which was written several years after the publication of the novel, Faulkner said, “I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much, as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the sane secretly unscrupulous intentions. But when I finished The Sound and the Fury I discovered that there is actually something to which the shabby term Art not only can, but must, be applied.” (Southern Review

Given its close affinities to New Criticism, particularly in the emphasis on close reading and the autonomy of the text, and the complex nature of Faulkner’s texts, it is small wonder that deconstruction has proved a very popular critical methodology for Faulkner Studies. Few critics today call themselves deconstructionist, but many make use of the concepts behind deconstruction without explicitly identifying their work as such and would likely be more comfortable with the label of poststructuralism. Since poststructuralism is an umbrella term which carries under itself a variety of theoretical orientations and discourses, it would be rather reasonable to seek equally valid reading strategies to study