Under the Sign of Trauma: An Analysis of William Faulkner’s 1929-1932 Novels

Abstract

This dissertation explores the dimensions of trauma in William Faulkner’s most experimental body of work written between 1929 and 1932. Interrogating trauma as a thematic concern and a formal strategy, I devise a tripartite structure to synchronically analyze its psychological, social, and aesthetic manifestations in the novelist's major novels. Specifically, this interdisciplinary analysis foregrounds the psychological expressions of suffering in Faulkner’s protagonists; situates individual distress within institutional frameworks; and locates the novelist’s strategies close to the formal mechanisms structuring traumatization. In its conclusions, this project identifies a poetics of trauma in Faulkner’s fiction. My reading brings into focus the author’s psychological intuition and considers new motivations behind his formal experimentation. Ultimately, by approaching trauma as both a clinical and formal entity, I establish a continuum between polarized views of trauma as either a biological reality or an aesthetic construct.