'There was another yellow butterfly, like one of the sunflecks had come loose' WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD HUGHES Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, The Sound and the Fury explores intense, passionate family relationships where there is no love, only self-centredness. At its heart this is a novel about lovelessness - 'only an idiot has no grief; only a fool would forget it. What else is there in this world sharp enough to stick to your guts?'

Ever since the first furore was created on its publication in 1929, The Sound and the Fury has been considered one of the key novels of this century. Depicting the gradual disintegration of the Compson family through four fractured narratives, T

Retells the tragic times of the Compson family, including beautiful, rebellious Caddy; man-child Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic and Dilsey, their black servant.

Presents critical essays reflecting a variety of schools of criticism for The sound and the fury.

Chapter 1 provides some general context about Faulkner's life and work in the American South and' Yoknapatawpha County', and introduces the form and style of Faulkner's novel. Chapter 2 provides a discussion of the contexts of Southern history and Faulkner's family history. Chapter 3 is a discussion of the influences on Faulkner of Modernist literature and Modernist psychology and philosophy. Chapter 4 gives a close commentary on each of the novel's four narratives.

The Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including the technique known as stream of consciousness, pioneered by 20th-century European novelists such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later claimed was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

This non-academic author brings the Garden of Eden myth alive as sophisticated poetry and a polemic for women and the consciousness of freedom. The myth is explored line by line using the tools of literary analysis and modern ideas, including Freudian concepts. The analysis shows how its "J" author, thought to be a woman in the royal court of Judah around 1000 BCE, uses the techniques of sound association, puns and other sophisticated means to get her messages across. The analysis probes how after thousands of years this myth still speaks to us about the critical human experiences of sex and death and their bigger brothers freedom and limitation.