William Faulkner(1897-1962).pptVIP

William Faulkner(1897-1962) Basic introduction William Faulkner was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate. He is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature generally and Southern literature specifically. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life. Life experience Faulkner was born into a Southern family with a fairly long history in Mississippi. The members of his family proved to be valuable prototypes for his fictional characters. When Faulkner was 5 years old, his family settled in Oxford, where he lived on and off for the rest of his life. In adolescence, Faulkner began writing poetry almost exclusively. He did not write his first novel until 1925. He attended the University of Mississippi and some of his poems were published in campus journals. Life experience When he was 17, Faulkner met Philip Stone, who would later become an important early influence on his writing. Stone read and was impressed by some of Faulkners early poetry and was one of the first to discover Faulkners talent and artistic potential. Stone became a literary mentor to the young Faulkner, introducing him to writers such as Frost, Pound, and Sherwood Anderson. Life experience Although Faulkner is heavily identified with Mississippi, he was residing in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1925 when he wrote his first novel, Soldiers Pay, after being directly influenced by Sherwood Anderson to attempt fiction writing. Anderson also assisted in the publication of Soldiers Pay and of Mosquitoes, Faulkners second novel. Life experience In the autumn of 1928, he began working on The Sound and the Fury. He started by writing three short stories about a group of children with the last name Compson, but soon began to feel that the characters he had created might be better suited for a full-le