sound and the fury Flashcards

1
Q

Malcolm Bradbury- modernist ideas

A

‘The coalescence, the fusion - if reason and unreason, intellect and emotion, subjective and objective’

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2
Q

What did Faulkner call the Sound & the Fury?

A

His most magnificent failure

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3
Q

When was TSATF published

A

1929

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4
Q

Where is it set

A

Fictional Yoknalatawpha

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5
Q

Faulkner to his friend Ben Wasson on the book

A

‘Read this, Bud. It’s a real son-of-a-bitch… this one’s the greatest I’ll ever write’

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6
Q

Quentin’s muddying caddy

A

Overtly sexual overtones
‘Quentin wiped mud from his legs smeared it on her wet hard turning body hearing her fingers going into his face’

  • muddy drawers
  • branch scene where Quentin suggests invest or double suicide
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7
Q

Sartre

A

‘In the sound and the fury, everything occurs in the wigs; nothing happens, everything has happened’

‘There is never any progression… to be present is to appear without reason and he suspended’

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8
Q

Semantic field of paralysis and stasis in the sound and the fury

A
  1. ‘Static serenity’
  2. ‘breathlessness like a gull motionless in mid-air, like on an invisible wire’
  3. ‘caught by a spell just under crescendo and sustained
  4. ‘Still violent fecundity’
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9
Q

Even worse than things ending is the fact that they recur continually ‘again’ and ‘again’

A

‘Was the saddest word of all there is nothing else in the world it’s not despair even time until it was’

‘Again. Sadder than was. Again. Saddest of all. Again’

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10
Q

Static circularity of Streetcar

A

Resounding final line ‘this game is a seven-card stud’ + new born child

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11
Q

Ronald Bush in Modern/Post Modern

A

‘State of continuous becoming’

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12
Q

Benjy Compson

A

Unbelievable crescendo of sound and fury, his bellow containing the sound of the spheres, a tale pronounced vehemently out of the cracked mind of an ‘idiot’ - all signifying nothing

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13
Q

Why chronological disorder in the sound and the fury?

A

‘The order of the past is the order of the heart’ - Sartre

Fury follows impulses and emotions around themes of caddy’s pregnancy, Benjy’s castration and quentin’s suicide - these impulses are the only truly viable means of coming to new understandings.

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14
Q

Cavalier identity is obsolete for Quentin : decay - shift from property owning to middle classes

A

‘Father said it used to be a gentleman was known by his books, nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned’

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15
Q

The handing down of Quentin’s grandfathers watch (symbol of repetition as well as continual movement)

A

‘It was Grandfather’s, and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s’

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16
Q

The civil war according to mr Compson (reminder if individual defeat)

A

‘Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools’

17
Q

Living time as outside of temporality - mr Compson impossible existence for Quentin

A

‘Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life’

18
Q

Endless monotony & repetition Faulkner

A

‘Again. Sadder than was. Again. saddest of all. Again.’

19
Q

Quentin break down

A

‘A quarter hour yet. And then I’ll not be. The peacefullest words. Peacefullest. Non fui. Sum. Non sum. Somewhere I heard bells once. Mississippi or Massachussetts.’

20
Q

Non fui. Sum. Fui. Non sum.

A

I was not. I am. I was. I am not.

Latin epicurean epigram saying all sensation ends at the point of death. Usually ends with ‘non curo’ (I don’t care) - in omitting these words Q shows lack of reconciliation with the fate he can’t accept

21
Q

Dilsey quote

A

‘I’ve seed de first en de last… I seed de beginnin, en now indeed da endin’

22
Q

Quentin continual complaint

A

‘If things just finished themselves’

23
Q

Lack of finality for Quentin

A
  • drowning as consummating his sexual love for Caddy in her guise as a water nymph
  • ritual of purification (like his jump into hog wallow upon being caught w Natalie)
  • cyclical return to his mother’s womb (body heals to caverns and grottoes of sea - uterine harmony that evaded him in life’
  • transcendence into ‘drowning infinity’
24
Q

Shvey on Blanche’s death

A

‘Williams clearly suggests an identification between the tragic fall of one and the birth of another.. blanche’s symbolic death has resulted in a new life’

25
Q

Blanche’s purgation as well as rebirth is implied…

A

Blanche’s confrontation with the death figure of the Mexican flower seller is deliberately placed on her birthday, the day of her rape, and the day Stella gives birth

26
Q

How does Williams use the colour blue?

A

To link ideas of death to birth and purification-
‘Della robia’ blue dress (day after last purifying bath)
New born baby’s ‘pale blue blanket’

27
Q

Williams on Blanche

A

‘Blanche was the most rational of all the characters… and in almost all ways, she was the strongest’

28
Q

Common theme of Fury & streetcar

A

Grasping and ‘clinging’ to their ‘tenderer feelings’ - nostalgia towards southern culture: potency of these desires give it an ascendancy

29
Q

How does Blanche leave with an aesthetic dignity

A

Results the matron at the end until the doctor offers his arm to her like a real gentleman. Cries ‘Fire! fire! Fire?m when Mitch touches her sexually.

30
Q

Faulkner Nobel peace prize 1950

A

‘The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail’

31
Q

When was the Awakening published

A

1899

32
Q

When was Light in August published

A

1932

33
Q

Sex as emancipating in streetcar

A

‘The things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark - that sort of make everything else seem - unimportant’

34
Q

Caddy sex & death

A

‘When they touched me I died’

35
Q

Virginity in fury

A

‘Men invented virginity not women’ a negative state ‘like death: only a state in which the others are left’

36
Q

Quentin on connection between femininity & purity - idea of sexuality as primal & transcendental can’t be integrated

A

‘Because women so delicate so mysterious Father said. Delicate equilibrium of periodical filth between two moons balanced (…) liquid putrefaction like drowned things floating like pale rubber flabbily filled getting the odour of honeysuckle all mixed up’

37
Q

Blanche’s contradictory & incoherent sexuality

A

As incoherent as Freud’s accounts of hysterical patients, fuelled by an irreconcilable lust for her gay husband who she ‘failed in some mysterious way’

38
Q

What’s the best text on Faulkner

A

Daniel J Singal - the making of a modernist

39
Q

Bleikasten on Quentin’s monologue

A

Record of a ‘process of derealization’ during which ‘the entire fabric of a self is unraveled and comes apart’