Vorticism and Iron: Architectural Dialogue in Faulkner's "Mirrors of Chartres Street"

Abstract

William Faulkner shows the objective and subjective world in intimate dialogue throughout his fiction. His pattern of representing bodies in conversation with buildings through movement and perception is integral to his vision of embodied experience. This article demonstrates how Faulkner employs competing romantic and modernist architectures in service of a descriptive ontology and a new theory of architecture. In "Mirrors of Chartres Street," Faulkner offers a new mode of building that rejects the use of property or tools, heroizing the body itself as a means of building and dwelling.