Character and Mourning: Woolf, Faulkner, and the Novel Elegy of the First World War PDF
Preview Character and Mourning: Woolf, Faulkner, and the Novel Elegy of the First World War
ERIN PENNER CHARACTER Woolf, Faulkner & the Novel Elegy of the First World War AND a MOURNI NG Character and Mourning C H A R AC T E R A N D M O U R N I N G woolf, faulkner, and the novel elegy of the first world war Erin Penner university of virginia press Charlottesville and London University of Virginia Press © 2019 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper First published 2019 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Penner, Erin, 1983– author. Title: Character and mourning : Woolf, Faulkner, and the novel elegy of the First World War / Erin Penner. Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019002902 | ISBN 9780813942964 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813942971 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780813942988 (e- book) Subjects: LCSH: Woolf, Virginia, 1882– 1941— Criticism and interpretation. | Faulkner, William, 1897– 1962— Criticism and interpretation. | World War, 1914– 1918— In literature. | Grief in literature. | War in literature. Classification: LCC PR6045.O72 Z8585 2019 | DDC 823/.912— dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002902 Cover art: A British cavalryman in the First World War. (National Library of Scotland/CC BY 4.0) First to my parents, later to Katherine and Nathaniel, and always to Sydney Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1 Multiplying Mourners in The Sound and the Fury 27 2 Competitive Elegy in The Waves 42 3 The Lively Response of the Dead in As I Lay Dying and Jacob’s Room 78 4 “A Host of Others” in Mrs. Dalloway 115 5 “Unproductive” Grief in Go Down, Moses 146 Conclusion 189 Notes 191 Works Cited 209 Index 221 Acknowledgments Critics of Woolf, Faulkner, modernism, and the interwar period have borne with various pieces of this project over the past decade, and I am grateful to fellow conference attendees for their questions and suggestions, particu- larly the hard ones. Beyond their significant material contributions to this project, I am thankful to those communities for proving so welcoming to a scholar who is still finding her footing. My graduate advisor, Molly Hite, is an enthusiastic reader of both Faulkner and Woolf. She urged me to abandon my tidy arguments and go after the truly unruly: precisely the nudge I needed. My thanks also to Doug Mao, Roger Gilbert, and Kevin Attell for holding me accountable for my methods and materials. From the beginning of my project, all four advi- sors worked to make this a book worth reading, not merely a disciplinary exercise, and for that I am grateful. An early version of chapter 2 first appeared as “The Order of a Smashed Window- Pane: Novel Elegy in Virginia Woolf’s The Waves,” in Twentieth- Century Literature 61.1 (2015): 63–9 1. Sections of chapter 5 also appeared as “Fighting for Black Grief: Exchanging the Civil War for Civil Rights in Go Down, Moses,” in Mississippi Quarterly 67.3 (2014): 403– 27. My thanks to the editors of both journals for permission to reprint, but even more to the anonymous readers who insisted that my material held greater significance than I had articulated and then patiently showed me how to find it. I am also grateful to the two anonymous readers for the University of Virginia Press, who provided detailed comments that take seriously what I am striv- ing to accomplish. My thanks too to Eric Brandt for articulating what he found most promising in this project and, in identifying it, helping me to hold onto it through my revisions. The New Yorker and the Artists Rights Society have kindly granted permission to reproduce Reginald Marsh’s 1934 sketch This Is Her First ix
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