The Sound and the Fury

Faulkner's four-told fall of the Compsons: Benjy's time, Quentin's watch, Jason's spite, Dilsey's endurance.

Specifications & Metrics

author

William Faulkner

type

Modernist novel

era

Southern modernism (1929)

language

English

setting

Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi

parts

4 sections

Relative Scale in Novels

Core Principles & Analysis

• Published 1929; its four sections rotate through four narrators.
• Benjy's section has no chronology — thirty years interleave by sense.
• The title quotes Macbeth's tale told by an idiot.

Sources

• Wikipedia: The Sound and the Fury