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The Sound and the Fury

Speculative Fiction

The Sound and the Fury is a novel by American author William Faulkner, published in 1929, Faulkner's fourth novel and the second set in Yoknapatawpha County, the first to feature the Compson family. Its highly experimental style, including its use of stream of consciousness and multiple unreliable narrators, are hallmarks of modernist literature, and its bleak, candid portrait of Southern life in the early twentieth century is paradigmatic of the Southern Gothic genre; the novel centers on Quentin, Benjy, Jason and Caddy Compson as their wealthy Mississippi family descends into chaos and disorder, its history revealed largely through sudden, unannounced flashbacks concentrated on a single weekend in 1928. Though it did not initially find commercial success, it grew in popularity after the publication of Faulkner's Sanctuary and was instrumental in helping him win the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Classification
Audience
General 1
Original Language
English 1
Composed, From (Year)
1929 1
FAQs

Where does the title The Sound and the Fury come from?

It comes from Macbeth's soliloquy about life as a tale told by an idiot; Faulkner's working title was Twilight.

The title comes from a soliloquy in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which the title character describes life as a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. William Faulkner's working title for the novel was Twilight. He had begun it as a short story about the thoughts of children sent away from their grandmother's funeral.
Connections

Authored By

Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)

In Genre

Gothic Fiction, Genres
Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases

Original Language

Also in Language Atlas: the original language of this subject.

Originated In

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)tier 2
Sources
1. The Sound and the Fury (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
    The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1929.
  • Lead
    The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1929.
  • Original language statement
    The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1929.
  • Lead paragraph
    The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1929. Faulkner's fourth novel, it is the second to be set in Yoknapatawpha County and the first featuring the Compson family, both of which would reappear in his later fiction.
  • Authored By: William Faulkner, Lead section, authorship
    The Sound and the Fury is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1929.
  • In Genre: Gothic Fiction, Lead section, genre
    its bleak and candid portrait of Southern life in the early 20th century is paradigmatic of the Southern Gothic genre
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