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William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness

William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness WILLIAM SOWDER Many critics consider The Sound and the Fury to be Faulkner's greatest work. Through the "voices" of three members of the prominent Compson family of Jefferson, county seat of Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi - Benjy, an idiot; Quentin, his suicidal brother incestuously obssessed with their promis'cuous sister, Caddy; Jason, the oldest brother who is a cheap sadist and congenital liar - and Dilsey, the majestic mammy who devotes her life to the family, Faulkner explores the Compson's moral and social disintegration. The compositional center of the novel is the Benjy section. 'I'his, the first section, from which the other three evolve, extends over the thirty or so crucial years in which the tragic unraveling takes place. Benjy is a stroke of genius, a megaburst of creative energy activated by close observation. In the Deep South, owing mainly to incest, many rural areas and small towns have their quota of idiots. Faulkner in his own Oxford neighborhood had for years passed a home with an idiot enclosed by an iron fence much like the one enclosing Benjy on the Old Compson Place. Doubtless, this unfortunate and others like http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Phenomenological Psychology Brill

William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology , Volume 19 (1): 59 – Jan 1, 1988

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1988 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0047-2662
eISSN
1569-1624
DOI
10.1163/156916288X00121
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

William Faulkner's Benjy Compson and the Field of Consciousness WILLIAM SOWDER Many critics consider The Sound and the Fury to be Faulkner's greatest work. Through the "voices" of three members of the prominent Compson family of Jefferson, county seat of Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi - Benjy, an idiot; Quentin, his suicidal brother incestuously obssessed with their promis'cuous sister, Caddy; Jason, the oldest brother who is a cheap sadist and congenital liar - and Dilsey, the majestic mammy who devotes her life to the family, Faulkner explores the Compson's moral and social disintegration. The compositional center of the novel is the Benjy section. 'I'his, the first section, from which the other three evolve, extends over the thirty or so crucial years in which the tragic unraveling takes place. Benjy is a stroke of genius, a megaburst of creative energy activated by close observation. In the Deep South, owing mainly to incest, many rural areas and small towns have their quota of idiots. Faulkner in his own Oxford neighborhood had for years passed a home with an idiot enclosed by an iron fence much like the one enclosing Benjy on the Old Compson Place. Doubtless, this unfortunate and others like

Journal

Journal of Phenomenological PsychologyBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1988

There are no references for this article.