William Faulkner's visual art : word and image in the early graphic work and the major fiction

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between visual and verbal modes of expression in Faulkner’ 5 art. Beginning with Faulk— ner’s early experiments in visual art, particularly his cartoons and illustrations executed for the college publications at Ole Miss, I show how Faulkner developed a visual grammar that informs all of his artistic productions. After foregrounding his compositional aesthetics, I discuss the interplay between the visual and the verbal in Faulkner’ 5 two illustrated books, The Marionette_ s and Mayday, as Faulkner is both writer and illustrator in these crucial apprenticeship works. In addition to these formative influences, I also examine how Faulkner’ 5 interest in modern art, especially the cubism of Braque and Picasso, provided him with distinct formal models that radically altered his aesthetic theory and practice of writing. Ultimately, Faulkner was able to transfer his visual talents into fictional structures. By focussing on specific pictorial techniques in a variety of novels, I show that Faulkner was able to create a unique fictional text that emphasizes interpretive and hermeneutical strategies of perception that seek to collapse the barriers between the visual and the verbal.