Author(s)

Shiyu Zhang

Corresponding Author

Shiyu Zhang

Abstract

Since the advent of As I Lay Dying, approaches applied in its analysis vary radically. While brilliant research outcomes have been yielded successfully, and a considerable number of them focus on its modernistic characteristics, Anse Bundren Bundren’s narrative especially, few literary critics and professionals have probed Anse’s perspective from the vintage point of Nietzsche’s theory of Perspectivism. Although Anse’s narrative is tagged as Faulkner’s “tour de force”, which means in writing the work he has not changed a word of it and it undergoes little reexamination and has not suffered any editorial modification, and hailed one of his very best, generations of scholars and critics find it “subtly unreadable”. This research believes that all this “unreadableness” is due to Faulkner’s modernistic writing technique, and more importantly, with his philosophical thinking regarding Nietzsche’s Perspectivism. Thus this research is to justify that Anse Bundren’s perspective is Faulkner’s literary expression of Nietzsche’s critical thinking of Perspectivism. The research examines the burial of Addie Bundren in the novel from the perspective of Anse Bundren, the focal family member. The analysis over sense and force of Anse indicates that he has a unique sense of Addie Bundren’s burial and his sense materializes under the influence of a peculiar force. The result of this research is that the narratives dedicated to Anse in As I Lay Dying is Faulkner’s aesthetic articulation of his critical thinking of Perspectivism. This research is the very first endeavor to offer an insight into Anse Bundren in light of Nietzsche’s Perspectivism.

Keywords

As i lay dying, Modernistic, Nietzsche, Perspectivism, Sense, Force