Eastern Illinois University The Keep Masters Theses Student Theses & Publications 1997 Yoknapatawpha as Camelot: The nflueI nce of the Arthurian Legends on the Writings of William Faulkner Sally Dye Eastern Illinois University This research is a product of the graduate program in English at Eastern Illinois University. Find out more about the program. Recommended Citation Dye, Sally, "Yoknapatawpha as Camelot: The nflueI nce of the Arthurian Legends on the Writings of William Faulkner" (1997). Masters Theses. 1829. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/1829 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses & Publications at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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' PLEASE SIGN ONE OF THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS: Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University has my permission to lend my thesis to a reputable college or university for the purpose of copying it for inclusion in that institution's library or research holdings. 7- 2./- 97 Uate I respectfully request Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University not allow my thesis to be reproduced because: ~ Author Date Yoknapatawpha as Camelot: ~he Influence of the Arthurian Legends on the WritinP:s of William Faulkner (TITLE) BY Sally Dye THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Master of Arts IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, EASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY CHARLESTON, ILLINOIS 1997 YEAR I HEREBY RECOMMEND THIS THESIS BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE GRADUATE DEGREE CITED ABOVE 7/21/q7 DATE 1/ i1 I ~7 DATE ii ABSTRACT In my thesis I examine works of William Faulkner which show the influence of the legends of King Arthur. In the introduction to the thesis, I discuss evidence that Faulkner was not only familiar with the characters of the Arthurian legends but was also aware of many of the different versions of these stories. The main sections of my thesis consist of character studies of various characters from Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha works in light of their similarities to their Arthurian counterparts. The King Arthur section includes the characters of John Sartoris of The Unvanquished and Thomas Sutpen of Absalom, Absaloml, both of whom resemble the legendary Arthur in terms of their character and the situations that make up their stories. These Arthur-like characters are set in the Civil War era to emphasize the similarity between the South of that time and the mythical Camelot. The Knights-Errant section focuses on Faulkner characters who parallel some of Arthur's most prominent knights, such as Lancelot, Gawain, Gareth and Galahad. Bayard Sartoris of The Unvanquished and Isaac Mccaslin of Go Down~ Moses are two of the best representatives of these knights in Faulkner's works. The portrayals of these knights allow Faulkner to illustrate a modification of the code under which their predecessors lived, which parallels the code of chivalry followed by Arthur and his knights. iii The Courtly Lovers section identifies romantic pairs from Faulkner's works that reflect the romantic pairs of the Arthurian legends--Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristram and Isolde, and Gareth and Lynette. Faulkner's pairs are Gavin Stevens and Eula Snopes of The Town, Quentin Compson and his sister Caddy of The Sound and the Fury and Byron Bunch and Lena Grove of Light in August. These romantic pairs illustrate the theme of idealism versus realism in Yoknapatawpha County. Gavin and Quentin are unable to reconcile their reliance on the ideals of the past with the reality of their lives. Byron alone is able to adapt his ideals to reality. The Merlin section discusses the characters of Sam Fathers of Go Down, Moses and Granny Millard of The Unvanquished, who closely resemble the sorcerer Merlin, adviser to King Arthur. The stories of these characters tie Faulkner's theme of destiny to his present-day characters' fatal reliance on the code of chivalry by illustrating the consequences of this reliance. The result of Faulkner's creation of characters that parallel the characters of the Arthurian legends is an elucidation of Faulkner's theme of the clash between the idealism of the past and the reality of the present as well as an explanation of the influence that the broken dreams of the idealized American South has on the lives of present-day Southerners. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of Dr. Michael Leddy in the completion of my thesis. Without his direction, encouragement and advocacy, my ideas might never have advanced past the planning stage, let alone have culminated in the final version you see here. v TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction . 1 II. Character Studies •.....• 12 A. King Arthur . 12 1. John Sartoris . 13 2. Thomas Sutpen . • • . 19 B. Knights-Errant . • 28 1. Bayard Sartoris .. • 29 2. Isaac Mccaslin 35 C. Courtly Lovers . 42 1. Gavin Stevens . 43 2. Quentin Compson .. 48 3. Byron Bunch . 53 D. Merlin . 59 1. Sam Fathers • • • • 6 0 2. Granny Millard . 65 III. Conclusion . • 70 Notes • • 7 3 Works Cited ... 77 1 I. Introduction In his fifteenth-century epic Le Marte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory tells us that "some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but . that he shall come again" (926). In fact, King Arthur has come again, over and over, in the pages of the literature of the last five hundred years. Two of his best known reincarnations are in Tennyson's Idylls of the King and and T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and there are many more. But do Arthur or any of the other mythical characters that inhabit the legendary Camelot appear in the Yoknapatawpha novels of William Faulkner? I believe that Faulkner did attempt to reinvent the myths connected with the Arthurian legends in his books of Yoknapatawpha County by creating characters and situations reminiscent of the characters and situations that make up the stories of Camelot. That Faulkner was familiar with the Arthurian stories is evident from direct references to them in his works. In fact, Faulkner authored a story, "Mayday,'' in which the Arthurian characters of Tristram and Yseult appear. Cleanth Brooks calls "Mayday" "a tale of chivalry with a vaguely Arthurian setting" (Toward Yoknapatawpha 48). In addition, in The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absaloml and The Town Faulkner makes reference to Arthurian characters--Lancelot, Guinevere, Galahad, Tristram and Isolde--by name. Whether this familiarity came from r 2 Tennyson or from Malory or from some other source, such as Scott or Swinburne, is not clear, however, although many Faulkner critics feel that Tennyson was a definite influence on his writing. Cleanth Brooks expresses the opinion that Faulkner could have gotten his "insights into the nature of chivalric love ... from Tennyson's Idylls of the King" (On the Prejudices 103). William Van O'Connor states that "Faulkner's rhetoric has several sources: it is indebted to Tennyson" (53) among others, and Joseph Blotner notes that "there were numerous unmistakable borrowings from Tennyson" (70) in some of Faulkner's poetry. Walter Brylowski wonders "how much of Idylls of the King was unconsciously absorbed and how much consciously rejected by Faulkner in his own reading of the poet" (147). This last speculation was occasioned by the derogatory view of Tennyson implied in Faulkner's Light in August by the thoughts and actions of Gail Hightower, which seem to imply an unrealistic sense of escape into imaginary glory. In interviews at the University of Virginia, Faulkner is asked if this view of Tennyson is his own and replies, "No, sir, that was Hightower's opinion, and ... I have a different opinion of Tennyson myself, that when I was younger, I read Tennyson with a great deal of pleasure. I can't read him at all now" (Faulkner in the University ! 93). Whether this last means that Faulkner had become i disenchanted with Tennyson or with Idylls of the King is i not clear. 'iiI I' I I II 3 There is evidence, however, that Faulkner was familiar with Arthurian legends beyond what is found in Idylls of theKing. Some of this evidence points in particular to Thomas Malory's version of the legend. In Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Miss Sophonsiba Beauchamp insists on calling her home Warwick because of her belief that her brother Hubert is the rightful Earl of Warwick. Perhaps coincidentally, the fifteenth-century Earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Malory. According to Eugene Vinaver, Malory was "among the knights who followed the Earl of Warwick on a military expedition to Northumberland" (Malory: Works v). Larry Benson tells us that "Warwick, who died in 1435, was once thought to have been Malory's captain at the siege of Calais" (187). While this reference does not necessarily mean that Faulkner read Le Marte D'Arthur, it does indicate a possible familiarity with its author. But there is further evidence. In The Town, narrator V.K. Ratliff is speculating on the character of Gavin Stevens and in the process refers to several well-known literary pairs, including "the Helens and Juliets and Isoldes and Guineveres" as well as "the Launcelots and Tristrams and Romeos and Parises" (437).