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Sensory Coding In William Faulkner's Novels: Investigating Class, Gender, Queerness, And Race Through A Non-Visual Paradigm, Laura R. Davis

English Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Although the title of William Faulkner’s famous novel The Sound and the Fury overtly references the senses, most critics have focused on the fury rather than on the sound. However, Faulkner’s stories, vividly and descriptively set in the U.S. South, contain not only characters and plot, but also depict a rich sensory world. To neglect the way Faulkner’s characters employ their senses is to miss subtle but important clues regarding societal codes that structure hierarchies of class, gender, queerness, and race in his novels. Thus, a more complete examination of the sensory world in Faulkner’s fiction across multiple texts …