Dialogic Discourse in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

• Main Authors: Lin Hsiao Ting, 林曉亭
• Other Authors: James Barton Rollins
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/62775898539493994451

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 90 === ABSTRACT The subtext in As I Lay Dying abounds in the characters’ unspoken words and the author’s unwritten words. There is subtext in every of Faulkner’s works, but the one in As I Lay Dying strives to create Addie Bundren, who dies very soon in the beginning of the novel. By applying Bakhtin’s theory of dialogic discourse and Faulkner’s use of the framework-story, we can analyze the subtext of As I Lay Dying. Bakhtin’s Three kinds of dialogic discourse, dialogue within monologue, dialogic monologue, and interior monologue are chosen to depict the characters in the novel. Via the unspoken words in dialogic discourse, Addie Bundren thus lives in the unwritten words, that is, the subtext, in which her character is complete and reveals the reasons for her death. Though Faulkner does not let himself become a traditional narrator in the novel, his unwritten words still dialogize with his idea of action over words. This idea is also the unspoken words in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech.