Rooting fiction into reality : facts and expositions in Faulkner’s appendix of the sound and the fury

Abstract EN

Faulkner’s appendix, devised to supplement his four-fold novel, displays certain features that are non-narrative.

Functionally, it is written to clarify, explicate, and illuminate certain events, characters, and narrative details related to the novel that is why it has become later an indispensable coda of the novel.

If the text is conceived of as having lacunas, the appendix is then assumed to be informative on an expository level.

It is designed to supply information of explanatory nature throwing the light on bits of narrative information that have remained hard to clarify or to disclose the happenings which the four-fold text has overlooked or passed over in silence.

But with little more hindsight, the appendix is cast in the form of historical chronicles where the past heritage and legacies are probed in favour of supplementing the novelistic fabric with factual, historical information.

The appendix is studied here as a seemingly factual, informative addition, which though falls out with the narrative of the novel proper, still is interconnected with it.

It is also examined as an independent expository entity that verges on a full-fledged history record (or possibly vice versa!) that has its own merits.

It is designed by the novelist to root the story into reality dispelling the fictitious bubble.

In all, it is an example where discourse genre merger is realized as expositions and history not to mention narrative work coordinately.

The internal structure of the appendix entries makes partial use of the four-fold formula of the expository discourse organization proposed by Michael Hoey and also finds expression in some of Athena Ball's eight patterns of discourse strategies.

In addition, historical formulas are taken into serious consideration.