William Faulkner’s Modern Vision and Postmodern Aestheticism

Abstract

American novelist William Faulkner’s modern vision is armed with extraordinary literary sense of postmodern aestheticism. As one of the chief literary proponents of the 20^th century Southern American Literature Faulkner has always in his literary works voiced out literary opinion for the integration of the blacks into the mainstream American society as opposed to their segregation. Faulkner’s literary standpoint has indeed offered great support to the Harlem Renaissance in terms of economic, cultural and social points of view. This paper underscores two important characteristic levels found in Faulkner’s select novels: From the Modern perspective it attempts to focus on Socialist Realism propounded by Georg Lukacs. And from Postmodern angle the characteristics of ‘Identity’, ‘Assimilation’ and “Representation’ are respectively identified and constructed on a hierarchical pyramid. Finally, the paper attempts to parley on Faulkner’s modern vision whose postmodern aestheticism is compounded and magnified to a great literary extent.