William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) ■ William Faulkner was born in NewAlbany, Mississippi and raised in nearbyOxford, and lived there almost all hislife. Faulkner left school in his tee nsand had no further formal educationbeyond a year (1919-1920) as a specialstudent at the University of Mississippi.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ The fact that William Faulkner was bom into a Southern family with a fairly long tradition is perhaps the most important of all the in flue nces that made him a major writer in American literature.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ The town of Oxford where he was brought up became the model for his fictional Jefferson, the seat of 丫oknapatawpha county. His own family history found its way into his novels and the members of his family proved to be prototypes for his characters.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ Faulkner's knowledge of the life of the American Deep South, with its tragic history of rise and fall in its fortunes, its ways and mores, and its language, all fused in his imagination and recreated, became the substanee of a Faulkneria n world strangely in spiring both nostalgia and a sense of impending doom in modern readers・William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ Most of Faulknefs works are set in the American South, with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness, and they are about people from a small region in Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County, which is actually an imaginary place・■ With his rich imagination, Faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and mythical kingdom. As a result, 丫oknapatawpha Country has become an allegory or a parable of the Old South, with which Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the experience and consciousness of the whole Southern society・William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ The Yokanapatawpha County series have an overall pattern in which the fate of a ruined homeland always focuses on the collision of Faulknefs intelligent, sensitive, and idealistic protagonists with the society of the 20th century・■ Almost all his heroes turn out to be tragic because they are prisoners of the past, or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own in trospective pers on alities.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ His first two novels, Soldier's Pay and Mosquitoes (1927), were not very promising, but Sartoris (1929) revealed Faulkner's fuller development as a writer. For the first time he entered his fictional country and began to create a world of his own.■ With Sartoris his training as a writer came to a close. His next book, The Sound and the Fury (1929), was definitely the mature work of a major author.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ In 1930 As I Lay Dying came out, and what had apparently begun to worry him was the lack of critical acclaim for his work. He then contrived the sexually aggressive and sensational plot of Sanctury (1931) to shock the public into a kind of recognition.William Faulkner (1897-1962) ■ Of Faulkner's literary works, 3 novels are masterpieces:□ The Sound and the Fury D Light inAugust 匚 Absalom,Absalom!□ Go Down, MosesWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) ■ During the next ten years hecontinued to work on hisYoknapatawpha county. His majorworks such as Light in August 932),Absalom, Absalom! 936), and GoDown, Moses (1942) appeared one after another.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ Here the deep South is delineated in as minute detail as possible・ Indeed, Faulkner's works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha saga,u one connected story,” one “mythical kingdom."William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ He writes about the histories of a number of southern aristocratic families and traces them back to the very beginning when the Chickasaw Indians were still lawful owners of the land.William Faulkner (1897-1962)■ In the very rise of these family fortunes, Faulkner sees their in evitable fall. These white settlers may have dreamed, built great houses with confidence and courage, and achieved a degree of success in their golden past, but they can not escape the defeat to which they are doomed from the very outset, for they have displaced the Indians and enslaved the Black race・William Faulkner (1897-1962)■What Faulkner is talking about concerns not merely the American South but the human situation in general. The spiritual deterioration which characterizes modern life stems directly from the loss of love and want of emotional response.The Sound and the Fury■ The Sound and the Fury tells a story of deterioration from the past to thepresent. The past it idealized to form astriking contrast with the lovelesspresent. There is in the book an acutefeeling of nostalgia toward the happypast.The Sound and the Fury■ Quentin*s section offers a good illustration. A miserable creature in the modern world, Quentin frequently casts a backward glance at the time of his childhood when life was innocent, romantic, and secure・He just cannot bring himself to come to terms with the present when is, to him, purposeless, futile, and devoid of the values which make life worth living ・The Sound and the Fury■ His suicide offers an example of a complete negation of the present. In a sense, Quentin's value system may represent Faulkner's own idea of an ideal way of life, that of an ante-bellum society.The Sound and the Fury■ With the story of Jas on whose life embodies all the vices of the modern world, the contrast between the ante-bellum society and the present one is brought out in the most poignant manner possible. The triumph of rationalism over feeling and compassion is best illustrated in this sterile and loveless individual.The Sound and the Fury■ Faulkner once said that TheSound and the Fury is a story of u lost innocence M which proves itself to be an intensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past.Faulkner's Style■ Faulkner has always been regarded as a man with great might of invention and experimentation. He added to the theory of the novel as an art form and evolved his own literary strategies. To him, the primary duty of a writer was to explore and represe nt the infinite possibilities inhere nt in huma n life・Therefore a writer should observe with no judgment whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.Faulkner's Style■ The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. He deliberately broke up the chrono logy of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie. The modern stream-of- consciousness technique was also frequently and skillfully exploited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator.Faulkner's Style■ Moreover, Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view, which gave the story a circular form, wherein one event is centered, with various points of view radiating from it, or different people responding to the same story.Faulkner's Style■ Thus a high degree could be reached・ The other narrative techniquesFaulkner used to con struct his stories include symbolism and mythologicaland biblical allusions.A Rose for Emily■ A Rose for Emily is Faulkner's first short story published in 1930. Set in the town of Jeffers on in 丫oknapatawpha, the story focuses on Emily Grierson, an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it.A Rose for Emily■ As a descendant of the Southernaristocracy, Emily is typical of those inFaulkner's Yoknapatawpah stories whoare the symbols of the Old South butthe prisoners of the past. In this story,Faulkner makes best use of the Gothicdevices in narrati on.Quote 1■ When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectable affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house, which no one save an old man・ servant—a combinedgardener and cook—had seen in at least ten years.(Selected Readings 617-618)Quote 2■ Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair. (Selected Readings 629)。
