Narrative in William Faulkner’s Light in August

Abstract

The paper aims to offer insights into the narrative of Faulkner’s Light in August (1932) foregrounding its inventiveness and originality. Although this work of literature is perceived as more conventional in comparison with its predecessors and successors in the Faulknerian oeuvre, the analysis argues that Light in August is very complex in terms of employment of stream of consciousness, typology of narrators, multiple points of views, juxtapositions, flashbacks, tense shifts and typographic experiments. Using Gérard Genette’s theories from Narrative Discourse (1972) as a theoretical framework which views narrative as the product of interactions among its various interdependent components, this analysis shows that Faulkner employs several experimental techniques that align closely with Genette’s narrative theory. The analysis arrives at the conclusion that the novel’s narrative is highly experimental and technically intricate, lacking structural unity, as it is marked by fragmentation, digression, and discontinuity, all of which are conveyed through sophisticated narrative techniques.