William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury met with only limited success when published in 1929, probably due to its fragmented, non-chronological structure. Since, however, it has become one of the most popular of Faulkner's novels, serving as a litmus paper upon which critical approaches have tested themselves. In the introduction to this volume Noel Polk traces the critical responses to the novel from the time of its publication to the present day. The essays that follow present contemporary reassessments of The Sound and the Fury from a variety of critical perspectives. Dawn Trouard offers...
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury met with only limited success when published in 1929, probably due to its fragmented, non-chronological stru...
Noel Polk, the Faulkner scholar and academician, is a native of the small Mississippi city of Picayune. In his career as an international scholar and traveler and in his role as a teacher and a professor of literature he has moved beyond his origins while continuing to be nourished by his hometown roots. Like many other southern men he doesn't fit the outside world's stereotype of the southern male. "I almost invariably see myself depicted in the media as either a beer-drinking meanspirited pickup-driving redneck racist, a julep-sipping plantation-owning kindhearted benevolent racist, or, at...
Noel Polk, the Faulkner scholar and academician, is a native of the small Mississippi city of Picayune. In his career as an international scholar and ...
This book by a major scholar of William Faulkner's writings collects choice selections of his Faulkner criticism from the past fifteen years. Its publication underscores the significance of his indispensable work in Faulkner studies, both in criticism and in the editing of Faulkner's texts.
Here, Polk's focus is mainly upon the context of Freudian themes, expressly in the works written between 1927 and 1932, the period in which Faulkner wrote and ultimately revised Sanctuary, a novel to which Polk has given concentrated study during his distinguished career. He has connected the...
This book by a major scholar of William Faulkner's writings collects choice selections of his Faulkner criticism from the past fifteen years. Its p...
Absalom, Absalom has long been regarded as one of William Faulkner's most difficult, dense, and multilayered novels. It is, on one level, the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, -who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.- On another level, the book narrates the tragedy that befalls the entire Sutpen family and that tragedy's legacy that continues well into the twentieth century and beyond. The novel's intricate,...
Absalom, Absalom has long been regarded as one of William Faulkner's most difficult, dense, and multilayered novels. It is, on one level, t...
Absalom, Absalom has long been regarded as one of William Faulkner's most difficult, dense, and multilayered novels. It is, on one level, the story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, -who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.- On another level, the book narrates the tragedy that befalls the entire Sutpen family and that tragedy's legacy that continues well into the twentieth century and beyond. The novel's intricate,...
Absalom, Absalom has long been regarded as one of William Faulkner's most difficult, dense, and multilayered novels. It is, on one level, t...
This informative study representing a variety of scholarly perspectives reveals the cultural, historical, economic, political, and even geographical evolution of Old Natchez, which until now has been given little attention.
In some ways, Natchez is among the best-known of American towns. Because of its strategic location high atop the Mississippi River bluffs, it became, in the early years of this country's development, the cultural and economic matrix for the great American Southwest. However, despite its rich history and strong hold on the American imagination, there are many...
This informative study representing a variety of scholarly perspectives reveals the cultural, historical, economic, political, and even geographica...
As one of the preeminent scholars of southern literature, Noel Polk has delivered lectures, written journal articles and essays, and discussed the rich legacy of the South's literary heritage around the world for over three decades. His work on William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and other writers is incisive and groundbreaking.
His essays in Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition maintain an abiding interest in Polk's major area of literary study: the relationship between the smaller units of construction in a literary work and the work's larger themes....
As one of the preeminent scholars of southern literature, Noel Polk has delivered lectures, written journal articles and essays, and discussed the ...
Mississippi's Piney Woods: A Human Perspective edited by Noel Polk with essays by Harold K. Steen, John H. Napier III, Terry G. Jordan, Grady McWhiney, Thomas D. Clark, Nollie W. Hickman, James C. Downey, W. Kenneth Holditch, Thomas L. McHaney, William F. Winter, Warren A. Flick, Milton B. Newton, Jr., Sidney McDaniel, and Noel Polk. For years the Mississippi Piney Woods region has gone virtually untouched by historians, though J. F. H. Claiborne and James Street have made wonderful use of its colorful and significant past. Only Nollie Hickman's Mississippi Harvest has attempted to examine in...
Mississippi's Piney Woods: A Human Perspective edited by Noel Polk with essays by Harold K. Steen, John H. Napier III, Terry G. Jordan, Grady McWhiney...
