The matter of man: the expansion limits of the “being” in the narrative Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner

Abstract

The novel Absalom, Absalom! by Willian Faulkner invokes narrative resources that approximate the existence of its characters in multiple narrative plans, to the materiality of oral and written texts of which its memories are made of. The proposal of this work is to reflect on the text as a human branding and an extension of “being”, based on Faulkner’s narrative. Therefore, we will mention the issue of authorship and associate the idea of the dead author to somber writing, recurrent in the work, to illustrate man’s attempt in surviving time. Moreover, we shall seek support in the thoughts of Henri Bergson who attributes importance of the body in composing memories as opposed to the conception of the brain as a deposit of memories. Finally, we consider oblivion as a way of writing, and still using the thought of Bergson, which suggests an ongoing matter, we will propose a reading that considers universal continuity and registers even the reader in the fictional narrative.