Cycnos | Volume 34.2 - " The wagon moves" : new essays on William Faulkner's As I lay dying | II. Forms and Figures

Résumé :

International audience

This article considers Faulkner's handling of the grotesque mode within a larger consideration of its significance in As I Lay Dying. After a brief theoretical exploration of the main tenets of the grotesque, the paper analyzes the way Faulkner weaves them into his gothic script, in particular through the handling of the ( female) body and the staging of a gallery of grotesques (including a bestiary). Textual gro tesqueries such as unfinished and unpunctuated sentences, indented or italicized statement are also studied. The final part of the article presents the "lenticul ar" logic of the grotesque (to use Tara McPherson's terrn) before exploring the overall political dimension of the use of the grotesque mode in the novel.

Mots-clés : The Grotesque, comedy and terror, lenticular logics, southern littérature

Date de publication : 2018-05