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An Incongruous Present: Identifying the Absurd Aesthetic in William Faulkner’s "Requiem for a Nun" (1951)

Hani, Blake
Abstract
This thesis examines the absurd aesthetic present in William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun (1951), in order to both re-open an otherwise disregarded text for more fruitful interpretations, as well as consider what constitutes a “successful” or “failed” text. By applying Albert Camus’s theories of the absurd developed in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951), a sense of logic or intention is revealed in Requiem for a Nun’s abrasive structural disjointedness and narrative incoherence. This absurd logic presents a subversion of the standards of successful narratives, as the text appears to self-reflectively meditate on the ability of a narrative to truly achieve significance.
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Please italicize Requiem for a Nun in the title.
Date
2019-04-01
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Undergraduate Honors Theses
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Thesis_Final.pdf
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Advisor
Begley, Varun
Lowry, Richard
Dawson, Melanie
Palermo, Charles
Department
English
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https://scholarworks.wm.edu/handle/internal/10825
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