The Sound and the Fury (New York: Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith, 1929), published on 7 October 1929 (Blotner and Polk, 1175), is the fourth of William Faulkner’s nineteen novels and the second of fourteen that he set in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the apocryphal town and county he created in his fiction. The novel is his first mature work and the one he often said in later years was his favourite (Faulkner, University, 77). Written over a period of approximately six months, from April to October, 1928, the novel is a complex experiment in form combining first-person and third-person narratives. It depicts the interactions of members of the Compson household, a Southern aristocratic family in decline, on the three days of Easter weekend, 1928, but it also portrays the significant events of the childhood...
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Citation: Meats, Stephen E.. "The Sound and the Fury". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 August 2006; last revised 20 August 2025. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7787, accessed 09 June 2026.]
