A Patchwork Quilt of Perspectives: Polyphony in Faulkner

Abstract

In these pages, I will examine the dissonant voices of Faulkner the author and the Faulkner the man alongside the voices of the characters and narrators in his fiction. My interest lies not in finding a satisfactory compromise among his works but in examining how Faulkner uses the concept of polyphony—here used to describe the presentation of distinct and independent voices within a literary text or collection of texts unbound by authorial consciousness—to dismantle the concept of authorial authority in both his fiction and his own extra-textual commentary on his work.