The Critical Reception of William Faulkner in America

The Critical Reception of William Faulkner in America PDF Author: David M. Poxson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Southern States
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description


William Faulkner

William Faulkner PDF Author: M. Thomas Inge
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521383773
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 606

Book Description
The first comprehensive collection of contemporary published reactions to the writing of William Faulkner from 1926 to 1962, these articles document the response of reviewers to specific works, and chronicle the development of Faulkner's reputation among the nation's book reviewers. It has often been assumed that a poor reception in the popular review publications contributed to Faulkner's lack of commercial success. The material presented here tends to refute that assumption, clarifying the development of Faulkner's literary career and providing a fuller understanding of the part played by book reviewing in the sales, promotion, and success of American literature.

The Critical Reception of William Faulkner's Work in the United States, 1926-1950

The Critical Reception of William Faulkner's Work in the United States, 1926-1950 PDF Author: Perrin Holmes Lowrey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 614

Book Description


The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War

The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War PDF Author: Michael Gorra
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631491717
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy. William Faulkner, one of America’s most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such classic novels as Absolom, Absolom! and The Sound and The Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha county one of the most memorable gallery of characters ever assembled in American literature. Yet, as acclaimed literary critic Michael Gorra explains, Faulkner has sustained justified criticism for his failures of racial nuance—his ventriloquism of black characters and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South—demanding that we reevaluate the Nobel laureate’s life and legacy in the twenty-first century, as we reexamine the junctures of race and literature in works that once rested firmly in the American canon. Interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words argues that even despite these contradictions—and perhaps because of them—William Faulkner still needs to be read, and even more, remains central to understanding the contradictions inherent in the American experience itself. Evoking Faulkner’s biography and his literary characters, Gorra illuminates what Faulkner maintained was “the South’s curse and its separate destiny,” a class and racial system built on slavery that was devastated during the Civil War and was reimagined thereafter through the South’s revanchism. Driven by currents of violence, a “Lost Cause” romanticism not only defined Faulkner’s twentieth century but now even our own age. Through Gorra’s critical lens, Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County comes alive as his imagined land finds itself entwined in America’s history, the characters wrestling with the ghosts of a past that refuses to stay buried, stuck in an unending cycle between those two saddest words, “was” and “again.” Upending previous critical traditions, The Saddest Words returns Faulkner to his sociopolitical context, revealing the civil war within him and proving that “the real war lies not only in the physical combat, but also in the war after the war, the war over its memory and meaning.” Filled with vignettes of Civil War battles and generals, vivid scenes from Gorra’s travels through the South—including Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi—and commentaries on Faulkner’s fiction, The Saddest Words is a mesmerizing work of literary thought that recontextualizes Faulkner in light of the most plangent cultural issues facing America today.

Critical Essays on William Faulkner

Critical Essays on William Faulkner PDF Author: Robert W. Hamblin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496841166
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
Critical Essays on William Faulkner compiles scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. Ranging from 1980 to 2020, the twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer—particularly in his treatment of race—the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts. The volume includes discussions of Faulkner’s techniques and the psychological underpinnings of both the origin and the form of his art; explores how his writing is a means of “saying 'no' to death"; examines the intertextual linkages of his fiction with that of other writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, Warren, and Salinger; treats Faulkner’s use of myth and his fondness for the initiation motif; and argues that Faulkner’s film work in Hollywood is much better and of far greater value than most scholars have acknowledged. Taken as a whole, Hamblin’s essays suggest that Faulkner’s overarching themes relate to time and consequent change. The history of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha stretches from the arrival of the white settlers on the Mississippi frontier in the early 1800s to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. Caught in this world of continual change that produces a great degree of uncertainty and ambivalence, the Faulkner character (and reader) must weigh the traditions of the past with the demands of the present and the future. As Faulkner acknowledges, this process of discovery and growth is a difficult and sometimes painful one; yet, as Hamblin attests, to engage in that quest is to realize the very essence of what it means to be human.

Creating Faulkner's Reputation

Creating Faulkner's Reputation PDF Author: Lawrence H. Schwartz
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870496455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Book Description
A systematic approach to using currently available techniques of artificial intelligence to develop computer programs for commercial use. From basic concepts of knowledge engineering through managing a complete system. Schwartz (English, Montclair State College-NJ) asks: How was it possible for a writer, out-of-print and generally ignored in the early 1940s, to be proclaimed a literary genius in 1950? His research illuminates the process by which Faulkner was chosen to be revivified as an important American nationalist writer during the heating up of the Cold War. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Faulkner in the Eighties

Faulkner in the Eighties PDF Author: John Earl Bassett
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 9780810824850
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

Book Description
This bibliography brings up through 1989 the comprehensive listing of scholarship and criticism on William Faulkner begun by Bassett in two earlier books, William Faulkner: An Annotated Checklist of Criticism (1972) and Faulkner: An Annotated Checklist of Recent Criticism (1983). Since the latter, over a hundred books on Faulkner have been completed, along with hundreds of articles and dissertations. This work lists all new items, often with extensive annotations, and provides separate entries for chapters of books that cover individual novels and stories. Bassett's introductory essay provides an overview of the last decade of Faulkner studies, the first in which post-structuralist and other newer forms of criticism had a major impact on Faulkner studies.

William Faulkner

William Faulkner PDF Author: Irving Howe
Publisher: Chicago : University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226354842
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
In this fourth edition of his celebrated critical study, Mr. Howe analyzes all of Faulkner's works, emphasizing the themes that run throughout the novels and stories. Mr. Howe is a shrewd critic....He has a good many observations that should help readers in going through the novels. --Alfred Kazin

William Faulkner and Southern History

William Faulkner and Southern History PDF Author: Joel Williamson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195356403
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 539

Book Description
One of America's great novelists, William Faulkner was a writer deeply rooted in the American South. In works such as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner drew powerfully on Southern themes, attitudes, and atmosphere to create his own world and place--the mythical Yoknapatawpha County--peopled with quintessential Southerners such as the Compsons, Sartorises, Snopes, and McCaslins. Indeed, to a degree perhaps unmatched by any other major twentieth-century novelist, Faulkner remained at home and explored his own region--the history and culture and people of the South. Now, in William Faulkner and Southern History, one of America's most acclaimed historians of the South, Joel Williamson, weaves together a perceptive biography of Faulkner himself, an astute analysis of his works, and a revealing history of Faulkner's ancestors in Mississippi--a family history that becomes, in Williamson's skilled hands, a vivid portrait of Southern culture itself. Williamson provides an insightful look at Faulkner's ancestors, a group sketch so brilliant that the family comes alive almost as vividly as in Faulkner's own fiction. Indeed, his ancestors often outstrip his characters in their colorful and bizarre nature. Williamson has made several discoveries: the Falkners (William was the first to spell it "Faulkner") were not planter, slaveholding "aristocrats"; Confederate Colonel Falkner was not an unalloyed hero, and he probably sired, protected, and educated a mulatto daughter who married into America's mulatto elite; Faulkner's maternal grandfather Charlie Butler stole the town's money and disappeared in the winter of 1887-1888, never to return. Equally important, Williamson uses these stories to underscore themes of race, class, economics, politics, religion, sex and violence, idealism and Romanticism--"the rainbow of elements in human culture"--that reappear in Faulkner's work. He also shows that, while Faulkner's ancestors were no ordinary people, and while he sometimes flashed a curious pride in them, Faulkner came to embrace a pervasive sense of shame concerning both his family and his culture. This he wove into his writing, especially about sex, race, class, and violence, psychic and otherwise. William Faulkner and Southern History represents an unprecedented publishing event--an eminent historian writing on a major literary figure. By revealing the deep history behind the art of the South's most celebrated writer, Williamson evokes new insights and deeper understanding, providing anyone familiar with Faulkner's great novels with a host of connections between his work, his life, and his ancestry.

Following Faulkner

Following Faulkner PDF Author: Taylor Hagood
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571135871
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Book Description
An examination of how Faulkner's work has been analyzed, elucidated, and promoted by a massive body of scholarly work spanning over seven decades.