NARRATIVE POLYPHONY AND THE REPRESENTATION OF THE HUMAN PSYCHE IN “THE SOUND AND THE FURY” AND “AS I LAY DYING” BY WILLIAM FAULKNER
Keywords:
narrative polyphony, psychological depth, human psyche, stream of consciousness, multiple narrators, subjectivity, modernist fiction, dialogism, narratology, phenomenology, cognitive narratologyAbstract
With an emphasis on “The Sound and the Fury” and “As I Lay Dying”, this research explores the connection between narrative polyphony and the portrayal of the human psyche in William Faulkner's books. Beyond merely providing a descriptive account of narrative techniques, the research tackles a fundamental theoretical question: why is human psychological experience better represented by the fragmentation of narrative authority into multiple, competing, and epistemologically limited voices than by unified, linear narration? The research explores how Faulkner's use of polyphony creates a sophisticated model of subjectivity based on perception, memory, and temporal dislocation. It is situated at the nexus of narratology, phenomenology, and the psychology of consciousness.
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