Faulkner

Faulkner Synopsis

That Faulkner was a "e;liar"e; not just in his writing but also in his life has troubled many critics. They have explained his numerous "e;false stories,"e; particularly those about military honors he actually never earned and war wounds he never sustained, with psychopathological imposture-theories. The drawback of this approach is that it reduces and oversimplifies the complex psychological and aesthetic phenomenon of Faulkner's role-playing. Instead, this critical study by one of the most acclaimed international Faulkner scholars takes its cue from Nietzsche's concept of "e;truth as a mobile army of metaphors"e; and from Ricoeur's dynamic view of metaphor and treats the wearing of masks not as an ontological issue but as a matter of discourse. Honnighausen examines Faulkner's interviews and photographs for the fictions they perpetuate. Such Faulknerian role-playing he interprets as a mode of organizing experience and relates it to the crafting of the artist's various personae in his works. Mining metaphor as well as modern theories on social role-playing, Honnighausen examines unexplored aspects of image creation and image reception in such major Faulkner novels as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, A Fable, and Absalom, Absalom!