Professor Wai Chee Dimock begins her discussion of The Sound and the Fury by presenting Faulkner’s main sources for the novel, including Act V, Scene 5 of Macbeth and theories of mental deficiency elaborated by John Locke and Henry Goddard. Her main focus is on the experimental subjectivity of the novel’s first section which is narrated by Benjy Compson, a mentally retarded 33 year old who is completely innocent of his family’s decline and fall in 1920s Jefferson, Mississippi. Professor Dimock traces Benjy’s preoccupation with his sister Caddy and her sexual innocence through his sense of smell, and the repeated phrase “Caddy smelled like trees.” She concludes by observing that Faulkner protects Benjy from the loss of Caddy by allowing him to move seamlessly between the present and the past, shielding him in his own memories.

1. Introduction
2. Hemingway's In Our Time (Part I)
3. Hemingway's In Our Time (Part II)
4. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Part I)
5. Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (Part II)
6. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part I)
7. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part II)
8. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part III)
9. Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury (Part IV)
10. Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (Part I)
11. Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (Part II)
12. Fitzgerald's Short Stories
13. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part I)
14. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part II)
15. Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (Part III)
16. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part I)
17. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part II)
18. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part III)
19. Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Part IV)
20. Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (Part I)
21. Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (Part II)
22. Faulkner's Light in August (Part I)
23. Faulkner's Light in August (Part II)
24. Faulkner's Light in August (Part III)
25. Faulkner's Light in August (Part IV)

This course examines major works by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, exploring their interconnections on three analytic scales: the macro history of the United States and the world; the formal and stylistic innovations of modernism; and the small details of sensory input and psychic life.

Warning: Some of the lectures in this course contain graphic content and/or adult language that some users may find disturbing.