Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Fall 12-14-2017 Cunningly Sweated: Creation, Memory, and Time in Faulkner's Mosquitoes Joseph C. Morecraft IV Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Morecraft, Joseph C. IV, "Cunningly Sweated: Creation, Memory, and Time in Faulkner's Mosquitoes." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2017. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/186 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. CUNNINGLY SWEATED: CREATION, MEMORY, AND TIME IN FAULKNER’S MOSQUITOES by JOSEPH MORECRAFT, IV Under the Direction of Pearl McHaney, PhD ABSTRACT This study focuses on the early fiction of William Faulkner, particularly Mosquitoes. Understood in critical context, this novel suffers from retrospective bias. That is, I believe that the brilliant work that immediately (and continually) succeeded this novel provided a critical comparison that made it impossible to ascribe the appropriate value that this second novel truly deserves. Mosquitoes was not only a necessary portal and stepping stone to his later/greater fiction, but it also stands on its own as a brilliant experiment allowing Faulkner to free himself from bonds of fragmented mimesis by submerging himself in his own social, literary, theological, and psychological influences, both past and present. Faulkner created a balance between the tension he felt of a traditional Christianity that was deeply ingrained into his southern psyche and a modern influence that consisted of Nietzsche, Freud, Bergson, and others.