Variation of Narrative Space: From Balzac to Faulkner

As a greatest realistic giant in 19th century Europe, Balzac has left the world not only a treasured literary heritage, but also made a profound influence on the works of later writers. As one of the most important modernist writers, Faulkner uses a macrostructure in his novels as Balzac does in his series of novels. He has endowed his novels with some of Balzac' s narrative characteristics and, at the same time, has tremendously diversified the literary forms of expression. With Balzac as an object of reference, this paper elaborates, in a perspective of narrative time and space, on Faulkner' s innovative approach to the conventional mode of narration, and finally explicates what such an approach signifies.