William Faulkner (1897-1962)

"The past is never dead; it's not even past."

Source of His subject matters

"[I] discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long

enough to exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal I

would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have to its absolute

top. It opened up a gold mine of other people, so I created a cosmos of my own."

- WF

The setting of most of his worksThe setting of most of his works

• In the American South, with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness. Subject matters from a small region in Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County which is actually an imaginary place based on Faulkner’s childhood memory about the place where he grew up, the town of Oxford in his native Lafayette County.

Yoknapatawpha KingdomYoknapatawpha Kingdom

• With his rich imagination, Faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and a mythical kingdom. The Yoknapatawpha stories deal, generally, with the historical period from the Civil War up to the 1920s when the First World War broke out, and people of stratified(分层次 ) society, the

Yoknapatawpha KingdomYoknapatawpha Kingdom

• aristocrats, the new rich, the poor white, and the blacks. As a result, Yoknapatawpha County 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.

Invention and experimentation in Invention and experimentation in form and narrative techniqueform and narrative technique

• A man with great might of invention and experimentation.

• Novel as an art form ; evolved his own literary strategies .

• Primary duty :explore and represent the infinite possibilities inherent in human life.

• Writer should observe with no judgement whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.

Narrative techniquesNarrative techniques

• never step between the characters and the reader to explain, but let the characters explain themselves and hinder as little as possible the reader’s direct experience of the work of art.

• The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time. Juxtapose the past with the present.

stream-of consciousness techniquestream-of consciousness technique

• to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the narrator.

• the interior monologue: to explore the nature of human consciousness

• presenting multiple points of view , gave the story a circular form , one event is centered, with various points of view radiating from it, or different people responding to the same story.

• symbolism and mythological and biblical allusion

Caddy

Jason

Quentin

Dilsay

Banjo

StyleStyle

• long and embedded sentences, complex syntax

• vague reference pronouns

• a variety of “registers” of the English language

• syntactical structures and verbals paralleled, negatives balanced against positives,

StyleStyle• compounded adjectives swelling his sentences, • complex modifying elements placed after the n

ouns, • sound very casual or informal sometimes• capture the dialects of the Mississippi character

s, including Negroes and the redneck, as well as more refined and educated narrators like Quentin.

• symbols and imageries drawn from nature

Achievement

• Winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize

• regarded as an important interpreter of the universal theme of "the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself."

• experimented in the use of stream-of-consciousness technique and in the dislocation of narrative time.

• discusses issues of sex, class, race relations, and relations with nature.

Primary Works

• The Marble Faun, 1924; Soldier's Pay, 1926; Sartoris, 1929; The Sound and the Fury, 1929; As I Lay Dying, 1930; Sanctuary, 1931; Light in August, 1932; Doctor Martino and Other Stories, 1934; Pylon, 1935; Absalom, Absalom!, 1936; The Unvanquished, 1938; The Wild Palms, 1939; The Hamlet, 1940; Go Down, Moses, 1942; Intruder in the Dust, 1948; Knight's Gambit, 1949; Collected Stories of William Faulkner, 1950; Requiem for a Nun, 1951; A Fable, 1954; Big Woods, 1955; The Town, 1957; The Mansion, 1959; The Reivers, 1962.

Study Questions

"A Rose for Emily"

1. Discuss the ways in which Faulkner uses Miss Emily's house as an appropriate setting and as a metaphor for both her and the themes established by the narrative.

2. What are the different uses of the themes of "love," "honor," and "respectability" in the story?

3. Why does Faulkner use this particular narrator? What do you know about him? Can you list his "values," and if so, are they shared by the town? Is this narrator reliable? Does the fact he is male matter?

4. Many critics have read Miss Emily as a symbol of the post-Civil-War South. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of adopting this stance.

5. Those of you who have read Charles Dickens's Great Expectations will see a resemblance. How does Faulkner's tale echo but also differ significantly from Dickens's?

6. How does this story handle the linked themes of female oppression and empowerment? What does it say about the various kinds of male-female relationships in American society of this period?

A brief introduction to the story:A brief introduction to the story:

• A Rose for Emily is Faulkner’s first short story published in 1930. Set in the town of Jefferson in Yoknapatawpha, 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. Simple as it is in plot, the story is pregnant with meaning. As a descendent if the Southern aristocracy, Emily is typical of those in

Faulkner’s Yolnapatwpha stories who are the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners of the past. In this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic devices in narration, and, the deformed personality and abnormality Emily demonstrates in her relationship with her sweetheart is dramatized in such a way that we feel shocked and thrilled as we read along.

Explanation of the meanings of the Explanation of the meanings of the natural paragraphsnatural paragraphs

• I. 1. The story started with the description of the states of the minds of different people at her death.

• 2. The description of her house and neighborhood.

• 3. (Flashback) When she was alive, she had been a tradition, a duty, and a care.. She got the special privilege not to pay taxes from the old leader of the town.

4. (Flashback) New leaders asked her to pay taxes. 5. (Flashback) New leader sent men to call on her and ask her pay taxes. 6. (Flashback) Appearance of Miss Emily—very fat and dressed in black: an image of old or pastime and color of horror. 7-14 (Flashback) Her attitude toward the deputy—obstinately refuse to pay anything and drive them out of the door completely.

II. (Flashback even further) II. (Flashback even further)

• 1. She seldom went after her sweetheart’s death and refuse any visit.

• 2-10 A terrible smell issued from his house and the neighbors complained to the leaders of the town, and the leader thought it not proper to tell that, so men were sent to put down the smell secretly on a night.

• 11.The men were frightened by her image at he window and ran away.

•12.(go back further to her youth when her father was alive) Emily dressed in white, color of innocence and pure, behind her father, her father drive away all the suitors so that she lost the chance of love and marriage.13. The death of her father left her poor.14. People wanted to offer condolence and aid, but she refused and kept her father’s body for three days at home, then buried in hurry.15. People seem to understand her strange behavior to do that.

III. She tried to start a new life after hIII. She tried to start a new life after her father’s death by marrying Homerer father’s death by marrying Homer

• 1. She took on a new image when she appeared again in the street after her fathers death—like a angel.

• 2. She fell in love with a Northerner named Homer Barron, a foreman of road- building workers and driving in art with him.

• 3. Different reactions about her date with Homer and her relatives were called to remind her of her behavior.

The inherited manners of her The inherited manners of her fatherfather

• 4. Old people talked about her behind her back and thought she had morally fallen.

• 5. She paid no attention to others and as dignity and doggy as she bought the poison, arsenic.

• 6-14. A description of the procedure of her buying arsenic.

IV. From her purchase of the poison IV. From her purchase of the poison until her death 40 years lateruntil her death 40 years later

• 1. People thought she would kill herself if Homer refused to marry her.

• 2.Some ladies worried her driving with Homer in the streets would be bad for the young and asked the minister to stop it, but useless.

• 3. Her cousins were asked to stop it, but Emily was found to prepare stuffs for marriage.

4. Homer had gone when the road finished and came back when Emily’s cousins left. People thought he would get married with Emily and take her away. 5.Then Homer never appeared again, and Emily stayed at home; the terrible smell issuing from her room. 6. Her image changed when she was seen again—fat with grey hair. 7. Her front door remained closed, she gave painting lessons to colonel Sartoris’s off-springs and get free taxes.

8. She lived in the past, refusing the development of the society. 9. Door closed and taxes refused to pay even the new leaders demanded again and again, she could only be seen through windows, like the carved torso of an idol in a niche. 10-11 (Back to the present) she fell ill and died, only her Negro servant with her. Her room filled with dust and shadow. (Gothic atmosphere)

V. She was a murder.V. She was a murder.• 1. The Negro open the front door after her

death and let ladies in and then disappeared.

• 2. On her funeral, old men wore Confederate uniforms to show respect, the monument of old collapsed. Old people tend to remember the old happy days.

• 3-4. The mythical room upstairs was discovered to be the bride chamber full of dust and everything of the wedding night remained untouched.

(Compare it with Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, Miss Havisham, a rich woman who was once cheated and betrayed and deserted by her lover on the very eve of their wedding, her expectation is to bring up Estella as a beautiful, cold-hearted weapon of revenge upon all male folk in the World;) 5. Homer lay dead in bed. 6-7 Emily slept with Homer’s dead body for many years.