1 A Difficult Economy: Faulkner and the Poetics of Plantation Labor 7 Richard Godden
2 "We′re Trying Hard as Hell to Free Ourselves": Southern History and Race in the Making of William Faulkner′s Literary Terrain 28 Grace Elizabeth Hale and Robert Jackson
3 A Loving Gentleman and the Corncob Man: Faulkner, Gender, Sexuality, and The Reivers 46 Anne Goodwyn Jones
4 "C′est Vraiment Dégueulasse": Meaning and Ending in A bout de souffle and If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem 65 Catherine Gunther Kodat
5 The Synthesis of Marx and Freud in Recent Faulkner Criticism 85 Michael Zeitlin
6 Faulkner′s Lives 104 Jay Parini
PART II Questions 113
7 Refl ections on Language and Narrative 115 Owen Robinson
8 Race as Fact and Fiction in William Faulkner 133 Barbara Ladd
9 "Why Are You So Black?" Faulkner′s Whiteface Minstrels, Primitivism, and Perversion 148 John N. Duvall
10 Shifting Sands: The Myth of Class Mobility 165 Julia Leyda
11 Faulkner′s Families 180 Arthur F. Kinney
12 Changing the Subject of Place in Faulkner 202 Cheryl Lester
13 The State 220 Ted Atkinson
14 Violence in Faulkner′s Major Novels 236 Lothar Hönnighausen
15 An Impossible Resignation: William Faulkner′s Post–Colonial Imagination 252 Sean Latham
16 Religion: Desire and Ideology 269 Leigh Anne Duck
17 Cinematic Fascination in Light in August 284 Peter Lurie
18 Faulkner′s Brazen Yoke: Pop Art, Modernism, and the Myth of the Great Divide 301 Vincent Allan King
PART III Genres and Forms 319
19 Faulkner′s Genre Experiments 321 Thomas L. McHaney
20 "Make It New": Faulkner and Modernism 342 Philip Weinstein
21 Faulkner′s Versions of Pastoral, Gothic, and the Sublime 359 Susan V. Donaldson
22 Faulkner, Trauma, and the Uses of Crime Fiction 373 Greg Forter
23 William Faulkner′s Short Stories 394 Hans H. Skei
24 Faulkner′s Non–Fiction 410 Noel Polk
25 Faulkner′s Texts 420 Noel Polk
PART IV Sample Readings 427
26 "By It I Would Stand or Fall": Life and Death in As I Lay Dying 429 Donald M. Kartiganer
27 Faulkner and the Southern Arts of Mystifi cation in Absalom, Absalom! 445 John Carlos Rowe
28 "The Cradle of Your Nativity": Codes of Class Culture and Southern Desire in Faulkner′s Snopes Trilogy 459 Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber
PART V After Faulkner 477
29 "He Doth Bestride the Narrow World Like a Colossus": Faulkner′s Critical Reception 479 Timothy P. Caron
30 Faulkner, Latin America, and the Caribbean: Infl uence, Politics, and Academic Disciplines 499 Deborah Cohn
31 Faulkner′s Continuance 519 Patrick O′Donnell
Index 528
Richard C. Moreland is Professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies in English, and former Director of Graduate Studies in English at Louisiana State University. His previous publications include
Faulkner and Modernism: Rereading and Rewriting (1990) and
Learning from Difference: Teaching Morrison, Twain, Ellison, and Eliot (1999).
Arguably the greatest novelist yet to emerge from the United States, William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer Prize, among other awards, for his narrative reconstructions of life in the US South. Since his death in 1962, scholarly interpretations of Faulkner s work have flourished. This comprehensive
Companion reflects the current dynamic state of Faulkner studies.
Written by leading scholars, the text is designed to guide readers through the plethora of critical approaches to Faulkner. The volume is divided into five sections focusing on: studies of the contexts of Faulkner s work; key questions addressed in Faulkner criticism; the genres and forms Faulkner encountered and altered; sample readings of particular works; and responses to Faulkner s writing by publishers, film–makers, writers and others. Each contribution both exemplifies current Faulkner scholarship and critically reflects on previous interpretations.