While William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury met with only limited success when published in 1929, it since has become one of the most popular of Faulkner's novels, serving as a litmus paper upon which critical approaches have tested themselves. In the introduction to this volume Noel Polk traces the critical responses to the novel from the time of its publication to the present day. The essays that follow present contemporary reassessments of The Sound and the Fury from a variety of critical perspectives. Dawn Trouard offers us the women of The Sound and the Fury, reading against the grain of the predominant critical tradition that sees the women through the lens of masculine cultural biases. Donald M. Kartiganer comes to terms with the ways in which the novel simultaneously attracts readers and resists readings. Richard Godden discusses the relationship between incest and miscegenation. Noel Polk examines closely the way Faulkner experiments with language.
