William Faulkner

(1897 -1962)

Background• The South: A large territory in southeast America; sharing

similar geographical features, accent, race, climate; similar ideology and culture; different from the industrial states in the northeast America

• Agriculture: main support of the southern economy (planting tobacco, cotton, rice etc.)

• Slavery: the darkest side of the South• Owners of the large plantations: noblemen in the South

(imitating the manner of noblemen and knights in Europe)

In the Civil War, the southern army was defeated. The conservative and proud white in the South had to face the

reality though they were attached to their past glory. Thus, in the American southern literature, the strong tragic sense can

be found.

Literary Scene in the South

• 18th century: only historical documents• 19th century: gradually development;

famous writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain

• 20th century: William Faulkner (most outstanding one); in the beginning of the 20th century, a group of southern writers, thus the Southern Renaissance; popular novel Gone with the Wind; later African-American writers

Life• Born in a Southern family with fairly long tradition; his great-

grandfather: a legendary character and a leader of a regiment in the Civil War; the family history was partly used by Faulkner in his novels.

• Raised in a small town, later was used as the background in his novels named Yoknapatawpha county.

• No regular school, read widely.• Eager to join WWI, but the war was over when he was still training.• Stayed in the University of Mississippi only one year and then took

some odd jobs.• With the help of Sherwood Anderson, he published his first novel.

However, he was not widely recognized in the US though in Europe he was highly praised.

• In the late 1940s, with the recommendation of famous critic Malcolm Cowley, Faulkner’s works were gradually recognized in the US. And in 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Works (19 novels, 3 short story volumes and some

other works) • Famous novels: – The Sound and the Fury– Light in August– Absalom! Absalom!– Go Down, Moses– The Hamlet, The Town,

The Mansion

The Analysis of Faulkner’s novels • (1)Special setting:

– Yoknapatawpha county (a typical small southern town)• (2)Characterization:

– vivid, “flesh and blood people that will stand up and cast a shadow”; enjoying the complicated state with little interference

• (3)Plot: – most about history of American South (its rise and fall; glory and evil sides; family story)

Yoknapatawpha County

The Analysis of Faulkner’s novels

• (4)Theme:– In praise of eternal virtues in human

history, love, pity, honor and self-sacrifice.– Faulkner thought that the doom of the

South was caused by ill-treatment of Indians and blacks and the way to change the meaningless modern life was recovering the traditional and eternal virtues.

The Analysis of Faulkner’s novels

• (5)Point of view: a new and experimental technique – multiple points of view and unreliable narrator– Multiple points of view refer to showing within the same

story how the characters reacted differently to the same person or the same situation. The readers should make judgments through analysis.

– Fallible or unreliable narrator: perception, interpretation and evaluation made by the narrator do not coincide with the opinions and norms implied by the author.

Readers should judge by themselves.

The Analysis of Faulkner’s novels

• Style: – variety from colloquial and dialect to

formal and refined; sometimes difficult to understand because of the using of modern techniques, such as stream-of-consciousness

Multiple Perspectives• The True Story of the Three Little

Pigs– Our only opinions of the original story

are based on only one perspective. We have a biased opinion of the story.

– Multiple perspectives would allow us to form our own opinions.

William Faulkner

Bio