The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2007 KNIGHT’S GAMBIT: GAVIN STEVENS AND FAULKNER’S CRITIQUE OF THE CAVALIER TRADITION Lorie Watkins Fulton University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Fulton, Lorie Watkins, "KNIGHT’S GAMBIT: GAVIN STEVENS AND FAULKNER’S CRITIQUE OF THE CAVALIER TRADITION" (2007). Dissertations. 1276. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/1276 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi KNIGHT’S GAMBIT: GAVIN STEVENS AND FAULKNER’S CRITIQUE OF THE CAVALIER TRADITION by Lorie Watkins Fulton A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: August 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. COPYRIGHT BY LORIE WATKINS FULTON 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The University of Southern Mississippi KNIGHT’S GAMBIT: GAVIN STEVENS AND FAULKNER’S CRITIQUE OF THE CAVALIER TRADITION by Lorie Watkins Fulton Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Studies Office of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2007 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT KNIGHT’S GAMBIT: GAVIN STEVENS AND FAULKNER’S CRITIQUE OF THE CAVALIER TRADITION by Lorie Watkins Fulton August 2007 Many readers and critics imagine Gavin Stevens as the character most resembling Faulkner in all of his apocryphal Yoknapatawpha, and while Stevens was once considered the most reliable Faulknerian spokesperson, ample scholarship has demonstrated that he is far more than merely the author’s mouthpiece. However, much still needs to be done to define the role of this persona who seems so similar to Faulkner, yet differs in important ways; this project is an effort toward that end. Prior to Stevens’s most significant appearances in the late fiction, two distinct types of gentlemen existed: tortured, failed idealists like Quentin Compson and domineering, swaggering figures like Thomas Sutpen. While critics believe that Faulkner’s juxtaposition of such characters illustrates a dichotomy between the man of sensibility and the man of action, I propose that, in Stevens, Faulkner unifies these two paradoxical types to voice, at a fictional remove, concerns about people of his own class and even of his own ancestry. I utilize Faulkner’s own trope of the knight’s gambit, a tricky opening chess move in which a player sacrifices a minor piece for a better position, to analyze Stevens’s evolving role in the late fiction in light of his position as county prosecutor. This examination illustrates how Stevens’s embrace of a self-serving form of justice, or “justice as he sees it” (RN 505-06), ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ensures his certain neglect of some characters and his likely abuse of others, regardless of his intentions. Faulkner’s depiction of Stevens is the author’s own knight’s gambit; he sacrifices Stevens and his moral rhetoric to obtain a more advantageous position, one that allows him to depict the danger inherent in trusting leaders who place themselves above the law in the pursuit of justice as they see it, a concept that, in Stevens’s case, all too easily and all too frequently becomes justice as it benefits him. Ultimately I determine that Faulkner’s descriptions of Stevens’s manipulations of the law, his misunderstanding of human beings, and his rhetorically high-minded pursuit of “not so much truth as of justice, or of justice as he sees it” (RN 505-06) removes Stevens ideologically only a degree or two away from the most terrifying dictators of the 20th century. iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director, Dr. Maureen Ryan, my director in absentia, Dr. Noel Polk, and my other committee members, Dr. Ellen Weinauer, Dr. Martina Sciolino, and Dr. Michael Saida for their advice and assistance during my work on this project. I am especially grateful for Dr. Polk’s continued participation on my dissertation committee after leaving the University of Southern Mississippi and for his unwavering support of my work on Faulkner’s late fiction. I also want to thank Mrs. Audrey Watkins for her careful and indefatigable proofreading; Mr. Wyatt Moulds for his support and service as a ready reference for historical questions; Mr. Tommy Covington, director of the Ripley Public Library, and Mr. John Cloy, bibliographer for the humanities at the University of Mississippi Library, for their invaluable research assistance; and Dr. Manuel Broncano, Dr. John T. Matthews, and Dr. Polk for providing and allowing me to cite their unpublished works. I appreciate the efforts of many people who read and commented on individual chapters, especially Dr. Theresa M. Towner, Mr. Claude Pruitt, and Mr. Forrest Plesko. Finally, I am grateful for permission from The Southern Literary Journal to reprint a revised version of “Intruder in the Past” (The Southern Literary Journal © 2006) in chapter three, for permission from The Faulkner Journal to reprint a revised version of “Justice as He Saw It: Gavin Stevens in Knight’s Gambit (The Faulkner Journal © 2004) in chapter four, and for permission from Modern Philology to use material from ‘William Faulkner’s Southern Knights: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Galwyn of Arthgyl, and Gavin Stevens” (Modern Philology© 2006) in chapters five and six. iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT............................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS....................................................................................... vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS..................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................1 II. REWRITING SOUTHERN HISTORY: THE UNVANQUISHED AND FLAGS IN THE DUST.............................................................. 18 William Faulkner, Southern Gentleman Falconer, Falkner, and Faulkner For Man’s Enlightenment He Lived: Colonel Sartoris’s Dream in The Unvanquished and Flags in the Dust III. GAVIN STEVENS: EARLY APPEARANCES AND PROTOTYPES.................................................................................. 54 IV. INTRUSIONS INTO THE PAST: GO DOWN, MOSES AND INTRUDER IN THE DUST............................................................... 70 V. JUSTICE AS HE SAW IT: KNIGHT’S GAMBIT AND REQUIEM FOR A NUN.................. 89 VI. UNTAPPED MYTHIC CONNECTIONS: SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, SIR GALWYN OF ARTHGYL, AND GAVIN STEVENS IN THE SNOPES TRILOGY.........................................131 VII. “FORMING HER MIND”: GAVIN STEVENS AND LINDA SNOPES KOHL...............................................................................................169 VIII. CONCLUSION............................................................................... 197 NOTES....................................................................................................................203 WORKS CITED..................................................................................................... 239 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1. William Faulkner beneath the portrait of Colonel Falkner in the library of Rowan Oak..........................................................................................29 vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations for William Faulkner’s texts have been established by The Faulkner Journal and appear in parenthetical references: cs Collected Stories of William Faulkner ESPL Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters FD Flags in the Dust FU Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia 1957-58 GDM Go Down, Moses H The Hamlet ID Intruder in the Dust KG Knight’s Gambit LA Light in August LG Lion in the Garden: Interviews with William Faulkner 1926-1962 M The Mansion MAY Mayday R The Reivers RN Requiem for a Nun SL Selected Letters of William Faulkner T The Town U The Unvanquished US Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner vii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Gavin Stevens . was agood man but he didn’t succeed in living up to his ideal. —William Faulkner (LG