Under the Sign of Trauma: An Analysis of William Faulkner’s 1929-1936 Novels

• Elena Dobre ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad Jaume I/Universitat Jaume I
• Localización: Moving beyond the pandemic: English and American studies in Spain / coord. por Francisco Gallardo del Puerto, María del Carmen Camus Camus, Jesús Ángel González López, 2022, ISBN 978-84-19024-15-2, págs. 148-153
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • North-American canonical author William Faulkner (1897-1962) is known for his deployment of events whose unruliness, more often than not, exact psychological and moral agony on his main characters. The claim undergirding this study is that the Southern author situates his work under the sign of trauma while dramatizing the tension between an event-based and a cumulative approach to traumatic shock. This essay aims to offer a schematic overview of the potentialities of a trauma-assisted reading of Faulkner, especially in what concerns the clinical dimension of traumatic suffering. Thus, I will first provide a very succinct account of the traumatic sources found in the novels published between 1929 and 1936, hailed by criticism as the most accomplished works of the author. Second, I will briefly discuss the strategies through which trauma is aestheticized in the author’s oeuvre. The concluding remarks will emphasize the interrelatedness of Faulkner and trauma discourse.