Abstract—William Faulkner is one of such writers. Greatly nourished in the Christian tradition and strongly influenced by modernism, Faulkner makes use of the biblical resources largely in his own and unique way. Faulkner uses character prototypes, character relationship modes, plotting modes, images and so on in the Bible extensively in his works to look for parallelisms between the Bible and his stories. By making use of those archetypes, Faulkner makes his stories surpass the South, surpass the USA, represent pan-human history and present, have the manner of the epic. Faulkner's works, Absalom, Absalom! is his masterpiece, which has some particular characteristics. It depicts a whole process of the rise and falls of a family and involves the longest time span. In this work, Faulkner touches upon some universal topics deserving historical period. In this novel, both the structure and plot display a kind of programmed characteristics. Narrative pattern of the Bible is U-shaped while that of the novel is an inverted U-shaped pattern, which is just contrary to the Bible's. There are parallel correspondences between the Biblical narratives and the plots of Absalom, Absalom! Besides, there is one major archetypal theme that can be found in this novel-the falling of the Garden of Eden and it is closely relevant to the novel's written theme-moral degeneration of human beings. William Faulkner, by making use of recurrent archetype, enables us to connect and appreciate these eternal human conditions in the specific Southern background.
Index Terms—Archetype, the Bible, William Faulkner.
Chen Chen is with the School of Foreign Studies, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, 100083, China (e-mail: 15810703161@163.com).
Jingpeng Yang is with the Ethnic Education School, Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications, Beijing, 102209, China (e-mail: 15901170506@163.com).
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Cite:Chen Chen and Jingpeng Yang, "Research on Biblical Archetype in Absalom, Absalom!," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 226-230, 2018.