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Student Companion to William Faulkner (Student Companions to Classic Writers) PDF

157 Pages·2007·0.83 MB·English
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Student Companion to William Faulkner Recent Titles in Student Companions to Classic Writers Jane Austen by Debra Teachman Charlotte and Emly Brontë by Barbara Z. Thaden Wlla Cather by Linda De Roche James Fenmore Cooper by Craig White Stephen Crane by Paul M. Sorrentino Charles Dckens by Ruth Glancy F. Scott Ftzgerald by Linda C. Pelzer Thomas Hardy by Rosemarie Morgan Nathanel Hawthorne by Melissa McFarland Pennell Ernest Hemngway by Lisa Tyler Zora Neale Hurston by Josie P. Campbell Herman Melvlle by Sharon Talley Arthur Mller by Susan C. W. Abbotson Eugene O’Nell by Steven F. Bloom George Orwell by Mitzi M. Brunsdale Edgar Allan Poe by Tony Magistrale John Stenbeck by Cynthia Burkhead Mark Twan by David E. E. Sloane Edth Wharton by Melissa McFarland Pennell Ele Wesel by Sanford Sternlicht Tennessee Wllams by Nancy M. Tischler Rchard Wrght by Robert Felgar Student Companion to William Faulkner John Dennis Anderson Student Companions to Classic Writers GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connectcut • London v Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anderson, John D. (John Denns), 1954– Student companon to Wllam Faulkner / John Denns Anderson. p. cm.—(Student companons to classc wrters, ISSN 1522–7979) Includes bblographcal references and ndex. ISBN 978–0–313–33439–9 (alk. paper) 1. Faulkner, Wllam, 1897–1962—Crtcsm and nterpretaton—Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Faulkner, Wllam, 1897–1962—Examnatons—Study gudes. I. Ttle. PS3511.A86Z577 2007 813'.52—dc22 2007025664 Brtsh Lbrary Catalogung n Publcaton Data s avalable. Copyrght © 2007 by John Denns Anderson All rghts reserved. No porton of ths book may be reproduced, by any process or technque, wthout the express wrtten consent of the publsher. Lbrary of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2007025664 ISBN-13: 978–0–313–33439–9 ISSN: 1522–7979 Frst publshed n 2007 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An mprnt of Greenwood Publshng Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Prnted n the Unted States of Amerca The paper used n ths book comples wth the Permanent Paper Standard ssued by the Natonal Informaton Standards Organzaton (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 v For Peter and Lochinvar “So faithful in love” v v Contents Seres Foreword x Acknowledgments x 1 Wllam Faulkner: A Southern Heart n Conflct wth Itself 1 2 Faulkner’s Lterary Hertage 9 3 The Unvanquished (1938) and Sartoris (1929) 19 4 The Sound and the Fury (1929) 31 5 As I Lay Dying (1930) 45 6 Light in August (1932) 61 7 Absalom, Absalom! (1936) 81 8 Short Fcton 99 Selected Bblography 115 Index 137 v x Series Foreword Ths seres has been desgned to meet the needs of students and general readers for accessble lterary crtcsm on the Amercan and world wrters most frequently studed and read n the secondary school, communty col- lege, and four-year college classrooms. Unlke other works of lterary crt- csm that are wrtten for the specalst and graduate student, or that feature a varety of reprnted scholarly essays on sometmes obscure aspects of the wrter’s work, the Student Companons to Classc Wrters seres s care- fully crafted to examne each wrter’s major works fully and n a systematc way, at the level of the nonspecalst and general reader. The objectve s to enable the reader to gan a deeper understandng of the work and to apply crtcal thnkng sklls to the act of readng. The proven format for the volumes n ths seres was developed by an advsory board of teachers and lbrarans for a successful seres publshed by Greenwood Press, Crt- cal Companons to Popular Contemporary Wrters. Respondng to ther request for easy-to-use and yet challengng lterary crtcsm for students and adult lbrary patrons, Greenwood Press developed a systematc format that s not ntmdatng but helps the reader to develop the ablty to ana- lyze lterature. How does ths work? Each volume n the Student Companons to Clas- sc Wrters seres s wrtten by a subject specalst, an academc who un- derstands students’ needs for basc and yet challengng examnaton of the wrter’s canon. Each volume begns wth a bographcal chapter, drawn x SerieS Foreword from publshed sources, bographes, and autobographes, that relates the wrter’s lfe to hs or her work. The next chapter examnes the wrter’s lterary hertage, tracng the lterary nfluences of other wrters on that wrter and explanng and dscussng the lterary genres nto whch the wrter’s work falls. Each of the followng chapters examnes a major work by the wrter, those works most frequently read and studed by hgh school and college students. Dependng on the wrter’s canon, generally between four and eght major works are examned, each n an ndvdual chapter. The dscusson of each work s organzed nto separate sectons on plot development, character development, and major themes. Lterary devces and style, narratve pont of vew, and hstorcal settng are also dscussed n turn f pertnent to the work. Each chapter concludes wth an alternate crtcal perspectve from whch to read the work, such as a psychologcal or femnst crtcsm. The crtcal theory s defined brefly n easy, compre- hensble language for the student. Lookng at the lterature from the pont of vew of a partcular crtcal approach wll help the reader to understand and apply crtcal theory to the act of readng and analyzng lterature. Of partcular value n each volume s the bblography, whch ncludes a complete bblography of the wrter’s works, a selected bblography of bographcal and crtcal works sutable for students, and lsts of revews of each work examned n the companon, both from the tme the lterature was orgnally publshed and from contemporary sources, all of whch wll be helpful to readers, teachers, and lbrarans who would lke to consult addtonal sources. As a source of lterary crtcsm for the student or for the general reader, ths seres wll help the reader to gan understandng of the wrter’s work and skll n crtcal readng. x Acknowledgments Ths book was made possble by the support of the Arts and Human- tes Councl of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a Chautauqua grant n 1995, and of Emerson College for a sabbatcal leave n 2005–2006. Debra Adams of Greenwood Press provded patent and encouragng edtoral gudance. My sster Cheryl Clark’s reslance has been an nspraton. I am grate- ful to Donne Crenshaw for sharng wth me hs enthusasm for Wllam Faulkner’s work, to Carolyn and Frank Kosewsk for ther lovng support of ther son-n-law, and, most of all, to Peter Kosewsk for sharng the journey. x 1 William Faulkner: A Southern Heart in Conflict with Itself William Faulkner stated in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature that all that can make good writing is “the human heart in conflict with itself.” Faulkner experienced major conflicts in his own life, including the competing demands of art and the marketplace and those of private and public life. He struggled much of his life for recognition as a writer, and he did eventually achieve fame as one of America’s greatest authors when he won the 949 Nobel Prize for Literature in 950. Six years before, only one of his 7 books was still in print. Malcolm Cowley, a key figure in the revival of interest in Faulkner in the late 940s, claimed that “Faulkner performed a labor of imagination that has not been equaled in our time,” making “his story of Yoknapatawpha County stand as a parable or legend of all the Deep South” (Cowley, Portable Faulkner 2). Faulkner lived his life deeply rooted in Lafayette County, Mississippi. In his body of work, he transformed his native land through masterful verbal art into the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. This “postage stamp” of land, of which he declared himself the “sole proprietor,” is both a richly particularized emblem of the American South and a universal microcosm of humanity. William Cuthbert Falkner (he added the u later) was born September 25, 897, in New Albany, Mississippi, where his father Murry Falkner was a passenger agent for the family railroad. Faulkner shared his given name with his great-grandfather, William Clark Falkner (825–889), known as the Old Colonel, a colorful figure: soldier, author, banker, and railroad 2 Student Companion to William Faulkner developer. In the Civil War, this illustrious forebear was elected Colonel of the 2nd Mississippi Infantry and fought conspicuously at the Battle of First Manassas. In 889, he was killed in a duel immediately after being elected to the Mississippi legislature. The Old Colonel served as the prototype of Colonel John Sartoris in his great-grandson’s Yoknapatawpha saga. An author as well, the Old Colonel also served as an inspiration for Faulkner’s literary aspirations. Faulkner was the oldest of four sons, and he remained close to his strong- willed and artistic mother, Maud Butler Falkner, throughout his life, only outliving her by two years. The family moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in Lafayette County in 902 when Faulkner’s grandfather (known as the Young Colonel) sold the family railroad. Thus losing a job he had loved, Faulkner’s father turned to running a series of unsuccessful businesses (a livery stable, a coal-oil agency, and a hardware store) before finding em- ployment in the business office of the University of Mississippi, his last job. Murry Falkner instilled in his son a love of horses and hunting, but his relationship with his oldest son was not as close as Maud’s was with Billy (as Faulkner was called in his youth). A second, important maternal influence on Faulkner was Caroline Barr, his black nanny whom the family called Mammy Callie. She came to work for the Falkners in 902 and remained with William Faulkner until her death in 940. Born a slave in the 840s, Mammy Callie nurtured in him an understanding of the legacy of slavery and of the rich oral tradition that linked the past with the present. Faulkner would model his characters Dilsey Gibson in The Sound and the Fury and Molly Beauchamp in Go Down, Moses upon Mammy Callie; he delivered her eulogy in 940. Young Billy Faulkner dropped out of high school in Oxford (his lifelong home) in 95, preferring to explore literature with his friend and mentor Phil Stone, who was four years older and a 94 graduate of Yale. Stone in- troduced Faulkner to the Romantic poetry of Keats and Swinburne and the prose of such modernists as Conrad Aiken and Sherwood Anderson. When Stone returned to Yale to study law, Faulkner visited him there in 98. The trip north offered an escape for Faulkner from a disappointment in love. His childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, had succumbed to family pressure and married Cornell Franklin in April of 98. Distraught, Faulkner sought to enlist as a pilot in World War I. Rejected by the Amer- ican military for being too short, he conspired with Phil Stone to pass himself off as English (with an assumed accent and the addition of u to his name) and to join the Royal Air Force in Canada. However, the war ended before he completed training. On his return to Oxford, he affected a limp that he claimed was the result of a plane crash (of which there is William Faulkner no evidence). As a special student, he took classes at the University of Mississippi, where his affectations of dress and manners earned him the nickname “Count No ‘Count.” He was acting out fictional personae, a tal- ent he soon channeled into writing. Faulkner’s first publication was a poem in The New Republic in 99. In this period he wrote poetry in the styles of T. S. Eliot and of the decadent French poets, as well as an experimental verse play, The Marionettes, that he also illustrated in imitation of Aubrey Beardsley. While writing this imitative apprentice work, he was content to support himself with odd jobs, such as selling books, painting houses, and working as a postmas- ter at the University of Mississippi who so neglected his job that he was asked to resign in 924. He left for New Orleans and wrote sketches for the Times-Picayune and The Double Dealer to earn passage for a six-month trip to Europe in 925, spent mostly in Paris, where modernist and cubist art fascinated him. Faulkner’s friends helped him get his early work published. With Phil Stone’s help, Faulkner published a book of pastoral poems called The Marble Faun in 924. Through Stone, Faulkner had met the writer Stark Young (also from Oxford), who had introduced him to Elizabeth Prall, the future wife of Sherwood Anderson, in New York in 92. While visiting Prall in New Orleans in 924, Faulkner became friends with Anderson, who encouraged the publishing house of Boni and Liveright to publish Soldiers’ Pay (926) and Mosquitoes (927), satirical treatments of wounded veterans and bohemian artists, respectively. After the modest success of these books, Faulkner was dismayed when, in 927, Horace Liveright flatly rejected his third novel, Flags in the Dust, about an aristocratic Southern family named Sartoris, saying it was too loosely plotted. Faulkner was so discouraged that he was close to abandoning his writing career: “I think now that I’ll sell my typewriter and go to work—though God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste that talent for idleness which I possess” (Blotner, Selected Letters 9). Instead, he decided to write to suit only himself. “One day I seemed to shut a door,” he later wrote, “between me and all publishers’ addresses and book lists. I said to myself, Now I can write” (“Introduction for The Sound and the Fury” 227). The result was his favorite among his works, his “splendid failure,” the novel that he wrote his “guts out” to produce, The Sound and the Fury (929). Never again was the experience of writing to feel as ecstatic as it did to him with this tale of a beautiful doomed girl named Caddy, told from four points of view. With his next novel, As I Lay Dying (90), Faulkner was fully confi- dent of his craft: “Sometimes technique charges in and takes command of

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