Modernist Literature: Faulkner and Joyce
William Faulkner
This novelist, aligned with the literary vanguard in the use of narrative techniques and language, also demonstrates respect for tradition in terms of content. By drawing on the issues and narratives of his Southern roots, Faulkner is considered one of the leading representatives of “Southern literature.” Sartoris reflects characteristic features of this genre, such as the recovery of family stories and regional settings, the recreation of the local dialect, and the construction of an imaginary world that would later feature in his future novels. From Sartoris onward, his major works can be classified around the following themes:
(1) The Southern Aristocracy in Decline
The decline of the Southern aristocracy since the end of the Civil War is at the core of works like Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury, and Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner’s vision ranges from criticism of its primitiveness and brutality to nostalgia for the disappearance of values such as education and a sense of honor.
(2) The Rise of the Industrial North
People migrating from the wealthy, industrial North are featured in the Snopes family trilogy, written between 1940 and 1959. This new ruling class in the South establishes a lifestyle in which greed and ambition are put forward as core values.
(3) Obsessional Love and the Poverty of the Land
Obsessive love, neurosis, brutality, and the misery of a world dominated by poverty are central issues in works like Sanctuary and As I Lay Dying.
Faulkner’s Techniques
Microcosm
Faulkner’s novels are often set in Yoknapatawpha, an imaginary county based on the Mississippi region. This area is marked by poverty and violence, populated by conflicting characters of different origins. The author offers a snapshot of the most backward regions of the United States, analyzes their problems and causes, and expresses his despair at their future.
Perspectivism
Faulkner employs multiple perspectives on the same event. His innovation lies in the multiplication of such viewpoints. In Absalom, Absalom!, he offers thirteen different insights into the central character, Henry Sutpen, founder of a dynasty that symbolizes life in the South. The intensive use of perspectivism leads to the elimination of the omniscient narrator, who is replaced by a figure who merely provides input from various sources of information.
The Reader’s Role
The reader must take an active role in Faulkner’s works. They are responsible for ordering the material and interpreting the meaning of fragmented narratives that lack chronological arrangement and an omniscient narrator to guide the reading.
James Joyce
James Joyce embodies a paradox: all the narrative material of his stories comes from Dublin, yet he left Ireland in 1907, never to return. He also had no links with the nationalist movement that achieved the country’s independence in 1921.
Two Stages in Joyce’s Work
First Stage: Realism and Symbolism
In his first stage, Joyce adopts a traditional literary position, close to realism but incorporating elements of Symbolism. Dubliners, a collection of interconnected stories about the Dublin of his childhood and adolescence, belongs to this period. The collection has a strong sense of unity, organized according to a temporal criterion:
- The first three stories reflect a world that the child cannot understand but already senses as murky and disappointing.
- The following four explore the problems of youth, who must choose between daily squalor or adventure and love.
- The next seven focus on the adult world, miserable and frustrating, dominated by existential failure.
The book closes with a longer story, “The Dead,” which explores the influence of ancestors and their ideas on human life.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a novel of initiation that recounts the birth of an artist. The hero, Stephen Dedalus, feels pressured by a reality that hinders him as an artist. He rebels against this environment, distancing himself from family, traditions, and religion. Throughout this process, Dedalus asserts his personality and dedicates himself to artistic creation.
Second Stage: Experimentation
Joyce’s second stage is characterized by experimentation. Ulysses belongs to this period. The book recounts, through 18 chapters, one day in the life of two characters: Leopold Bloom, a mature, middle-class man, disillusioned and tired of life, and Stephen Dedalus, a young man obsessed with freedom from the bonds of family and tradition.
Themes in Ulysses
- Father-Son Relationships: The novel explores the lives of Bloom, obsessed with fatherhood, and Dedalus, who rejects it.
- Marital Infidelity: Bloom’s thoughts are preoccupied throughout the day with the knowledge that his wife, Molly, is having an affair.
Structure and Narrative Techniques in Ulysses
Ulysses has a three-part structure:
- Chapters 1-13: Recount the separate paths of Leopold and Stephen in the early hours of the morning.
- Chapters 14-17: The characters, who have coincided at a hospital, journey together until they part ways after visiting Bloom’s house.
- Chapter 18: Consists of Molly Bloom’s interior monologue, recalling the events of the day (including her affair) and other events from her past.
Narrative techniques include the temporal concentration of the action, but also the exploration of past episodes through the characters’ thoughts. There is also a concentration of space, as the narrative is confined to the city of Dublin. Language processing is one of the most outstanding technical features. Joyce fills the work with verbal play and mixes a variety of linguistic registers.