Incl. W. Faulkner, R. P. Warren, Carson Mccullers, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O Connor

( 3 0 ) W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r a n d S o u t h e r n L i t e r a t u r e

S o u t h e r n R e n a i s s a n c e ( 1 9 t h / 2 0 t h c . ) - the nation’s lit. centre shifts from the East to the Midwest and South at the turn of the c. - incl. W. Faulkner, R. P. Warren, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor

W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r ( 1 8 9 7 – 1 9 6 2 ) L i f e : - b. W. Falkner in MS: later changed the spelling to Faulkner - grew up with the legends and stories about his ancestors, the family, and the past - left his high school without a degree: distressed by his childhood love marrying another, she later divorced, and married him - tried to enlist in the army x but: too small - enlisted with the Royal Air Force in Canada > returned full of dramatic tales of his adventures in the skies - enrolled as a veteran and special student at the Uni of MS, contrib. poems and short stories to uni periodicals, and left again without a degree - underwent a series various jobs - New Orleans: met S. Anderson, discussed books, and A. encouraged him to turn to prose W o r k : - conc. with ‘the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself’ - dealt with a single imaginary country x but: explored the whole of human experience - deeply appreciated the Am. South, and the South’s history - generally consid. the greatest 20th c. Am. fiction writer - received the Nobel Prize  P o e t r y : - < the Romantics (J. Keats), Victorians (A. Tennyson), Aesthetes / Decadents (C. A. Swinburne), and his contemporaries (T. S. Eliot) - highly derivative, in the pastoral mode - most of his earliest writing The Marble Faun (1924): - a slim vol. of poetry, publ. with the help of his Oxford friend, critic, ed., agent, and publicist - the title: from N. Hawthorne’s romance of that name  F i c t i o n : Soldier’s Pay (1926): - his 1st novel, publ. with the help of S. Anderson - the homecoming of a dying air force veteran Mosquitoes (1937): - a sophisticated New Orleans lit. crowd on a yachting trip Sartoris (1929): - the history of several generations of a distinguished MS family (a) establ. his setting of the mythical Yoknapatawpha county (b) establ. his characters to work with throughout the whole career (c) establ. his special themes of the complexities of familial, sexual, social, and racial identities, and of the burden of the past (d) realised the native soil worth writing about: claimed he would never live long enough to exhaust it - the Yoknapatawpha county (the capital Jefferson) = based on the Lafayette County in MS, the setting for 15 out of his 20 novels The Sound and the Fury (1929): - the economic and emotional deterioration of the Compson family - 4 magnificent chapters: each presents a different consciousness with a different conception of time and language - 4 the narrators: 3 brothers, incl. an idiot, a suicide, and a business failure; and a black servant in the last chapter with the traditionally omniscient POV - the brothers mourn the loss of their sister, each for different reason - examines the disintegration of the family and the private obsessions of the brothers - compared to J. Joyce’s Ulysses: his modernist approach, stream of consciousness, and dense symbolism As I Lay Dying (1930): - the poor white family’s efforts to fulfil the mother’s wish to be buried in her hometown - the multiple perspectives of 15 ‘interior monologues’ - presents the consciousness of each individual family member during the 6 day long mourning procession behind the wagon with the coffin - moves btw horror x comedy Sanctuary (1931): - a ‘flapper’ character gets involved with criminals, drugs, and prostitution Light in August (1932): - passion, racism, and relig. fanaticism - presents parallel destinies of 2 wandering orphans - a pregnant country girl searches for her lover x a presumed murderer, eventually shot and castrated Absalom, Absalom! (1936): - a family history of a poor white man - his dream of finding a dynasty in MS ends up in the ruin of almost everyone involved The Unvanquished (1938): - a coll. of stories conc. the Sartoris family - > “Ambuscade”, the opening chapter Pylon (1935): - a non-Yoknapatawpha novel - the adventures of aeroplane pilots (grew out of his flying lessons) Wild Palms (1939): - a non-Yoknapatawpha novel - 2 stories in alternating chapters - the doomed lovers x a convict caught in a flood ‘The Snopes Trilogy’: - incl. The Hamlet (1940), The Town (1957), and The Mansion (1959) - ad The Hamlet: a rising family of poor whites - > “Spotted Horses”, one of the short stories he often incorporated in novels, many dealt with the characters appearing in the novels - > ad The Town and The Mansion: more episodic Go Down, Moses (1942): - a racially mixed McCaslin family - > “The Bear”, an incorporated story: Ike McCaslin’s growing up, learning nature, and trying to come to terms with the modern age Intruder in the Dust (1948): - a black man’s surprising innocence in a murder trial makes him a ‘tyrant over the whole country’s white conscience’ The Fable (1954): - a dense allegory set during the false armistice in 1918 - a story from the WW I = an allegory for Christ’s suffering and crucifixion for the mankind - won him the Pulitzer Prize