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Chapter 3 - Invasions of Interiority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2023

John Michael Corrigan
Affiliation:
National Chengchi University, Taiwan
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Summary

This chapter explores the development of a distinctive Faulknerian ontology in relation to the mimetic information paradigm we have explored. I begin by exploring two characters – Dilsey and Miss Quentin – from The Sound and the Fury who provide a paradigm of autonomous personhood that is able to survive within a coercive plantation network. I extend this analysis to Darl Bundren in As I Lay Dying whose narrative arc vividly evokes both the development and dissolution of the mimetic self. Here, Faulkner anticipates a major theme in a number of his later novels, namely, alienation as a facet of modernity, one that compromises the possibility of sensuous or emotional access to others. Finally, I demonstrate how Sanctuary articulates this mimetic dilemma both in the rape of Temple Drake and on a larger social scale, in the hyper-mimetic quality of information flow through complex social systems that rely more on abstraction than on sensuous interpersonal bonds.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Invasions of Interiority
  • John Michael Corrigan, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
  • Book: Faulkner's Cartographies of Consciousness
  • Online publication: 02 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009377867.004
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  • Invasions of Interiority
  • John Michael Corrigan, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
  • Book: Faulkner's Cartographies of Consciousness
  • Online publication: 02 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009377867.004
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Invasions of Interiority
  • John Michael Corrigan, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
  • Book: Faulkner's Cartographies of Consciousness
  • Online publication: 02 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009377867.004
Available formats
×