美国文学史The Southern Renaissance faulkner.pptVIP

Lecture Twenty-one The Southern Renaissance William Faulkner (1897-1962) The Southern Renaissance Agricultural South Vs. Industrial North Slavery Vs. Equality Major themes of the southern literature: the aristocratic lifestyle on the Plantation; in defense of or criticizing the slavery; the superiority of the White; a nostalgic feeling to the prosperous past. Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner William Faulkner (1897-1962) New Albany, Mississippi (1897) (with a prominent great-grandfather, Colonel William Faklner) Oxford, Lafayette County (1902) Royal Flying Corps in Canada (1918) The help of Philip Stone and Sherwood Anderson The Marble Faun (1924); Soldier’s Pay (1926) A trip to Europe (1925) 1929: Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury, Estelle Nobel Prize (1950) Died of heart attack in Oxford (1962) Works (19 novels and 75 short stories) 1) “story-novel”: with its emphasis on a single incident or character The Unvanquished; Go Down, Moses; Knight’s Gambit, etc. 2)novel of formal juxtaposition: with emphasis on the presentation of a state of mind or attitude through interior monologue The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, etc. 3) counterpoint novels: The separateness of the stories receives deliberate stress Light in August, The Wild Palms, Requiem for a Nun, etc. 4) “fused” novels: Combining “the virtues of the short story…with the illusion of the density and of the complexity of life typical of the novel proper.” The Hamlet; Absalom, Absalam! ,etc. Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Novels historical period: from very early before the civil War up to the 1920s Characters: people of a stratified society, the aristocrats, the new rich, the poor whites, and the blacks. Overall pattern of these novels: Tracing the downfall of an aristocratic family the collision of his intelligent, sensitive, and idealistic protagonist with the society of the twentieth century. Major themes: 1)modern society as a spiritual wa