A Feeling you Cannot Name

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_352
dc.title	A Feeling you Cannot Name. Clocks and Time in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree
dc.contributor.author	Petrelli Marco
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	it
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-occidentale/2016/1/a-feeling-you-cannot-name/
dc.description.abstract	This essay is devoted to a thematic comparative analysis of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. Focusing on the recurring watch motif, the aim is to show the evolvement of a pivotal issue in Southern US literature: the troubled relationship with (social) time and history. The comparison is triggered by some passages in which McCarthy clearly rewrites Faulkner’s novel. Quentin Compson, the narrator from the second section of The Sound and the Fury, is obsessed with the passing of time – a fixation which is embodied in the watch that his father gave him. Cornelius Suttree shares the same obsession about time and clocks, and, just like Quentin, he is also tormented by an ambiguous relationship with the Southern aristocratic society he is part of. The Sound and the Fury and Suttree are hence tied together in their critique of the social neuroses of the South through the depiction of a biased sense of time.
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie occidentale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 50 \| September 2016
dc.issued	2016-09-30
dc.dateAccepted	2016-07-05
dc.dateSubmitted	2016-04-09
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2499-1562
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-50-16-23
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Cormac McCarthy
dc.subject	Cormac McCarthy
dc.subject	Southern Gothic
dc.subject	Southern Gothic
dc.subject	Time
dc.subject	Time
dc.subject	William Faulkner
dc.subject	William Faulkner

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

Clocks and Time in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree

Marco Petrelli La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italia

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abstract

This essay is devoted to a thematic comparative analysis of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree. Focusing on the recurring watch motif, the aim is to show the evolvement of a pivotal issue in Southern US literature: the troubled relationship with (social) time and history. The comparison is triggered by some passages in which McCarthy clearly rewrites Faulkner’s novel. Quentin Compson, the narrator from the second section of The Sound and the Fury, is obsessed with the passing of time – a fixation which is embodied in the watch that his father gave him. Cornelius Suttree shares the same obsession about time and clocks, and, just like Quentin, he is also tormented by an ambiguous relationship with the Southern aristocratic society he is part of. The Sound and the Fury and Suttree are hence tied together in their critique of the social neuroses of the South through the depiction of a biased sense of time.

Published

Sept. 30, 2016

Accepted

July 5, 2016

Submitted

April 9, 2016

Language

Keywords: Cormac McCarthy • William Faulkner • Time • Southern Gothic

permalink http://doi.org/10.14277/2499-1562/AnnOc-50-16-23

Copyright: © 2016 Marco Petrelli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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