Faulkner's questioning narratives : fiction of his major phase, 1929-42 / David Minter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Minter, David L.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Political and social views.

Faulkner, William.

Faulkner, William, 1897-1962.

Political fiction, American--History and criticism.

Political fiction, American.

Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Technique.

Technique.

Political and social views.

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Social problems in literature.

Fiction--Technique.

Fiction.

Narration (Rhetoric).

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xiv, 166 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois, [2001]

Summary:

Focusing on the core novels, including The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Sanctuary, Light in August, and Go Down, Moses, David Minter illuminates the intriguing workings of William Faulkner's mature fiction: the tensions at play within the fiction and the creativity not only exhibited by the author but also extended to his characters and required of his readers.

Faulkner's achievement, Minter contends, was in combining daring experiments in form with searching examinations of grave social, political, and moral problems. His novels change and expand the role of the reader by means of proliferating narratives that lead to questions rather than answers and to approximation rather than resolution. As his characters remember, talk about, and reconstruct their own sometimes conflicting histories, Faulkner extends to the reader the possibility of creatively revising and completing his narratives. Minter shows how this process at times implicates the reader in the corruption and violence of the story, as when the reader is required to fill in -- out of his or her own experience -- the crucial gaps left in the narrative of Sanctuary.

Positioning Faulkner on the cusp between modernist and postmodernist writing, Minter shows how Faulkner's methods undercut the self-contained exclusivity of the New Criticism by integrating the world of the novel with the reader's experience of history and culture. He also discusses Faulkner's use of the South as a model of unsuccess -- a part of the United States characterized by the "un-American" experiences of poverty, defeat in war, and moral failure -- and shows how Faulkner draws readers into a process of understanding and imaginatively revising two contradictory views of American history, one allied with the North and the other with the South.

An eloquent introduction to Faulkner's narrative preoccupations and methods, Faulkner's Questioning Narratives offers indispensable guideposts for navigating his narrative thickets as well as valuable insights into the central motifs and processes that define his fiction.

Contents:

1. The Force of Faulkner's Fiction: An Introduction 1

2. "Carcassonne," "Wash," and the Voices of Faulkner's Fiction 14

3. Faulkner, Childhood, and the Making of The Sound and the Fury: Love, Death, and the Novel 39

4. "Truths More Intense Than Knowledge": Notes on Faulkner and Creativity 55

5. Family, Region, and Myth in Faulkner's Fiction 71

6. A Brief Encounter with the Stories and Tensions That Define Light in August 86

7. "Monk" as a Guide to One Aspect of the Enduring Force of Absalom, Absalom! 96

8. "Shapes of Ceremonial Mortality": An Encounter with the Aggressive Violence of Sanctuary 103

9. The Strange Double-Edged Gift of Faulkner's Fiction 113

10. Faulkner's Imagination and the Logic of Reiteration: The Case of "The Old People" 129

11. In Lieu of Conclusion: The Voices of Faulkner's Fiction

Evocation, Celebration, and Revision 144.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [153]-161) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0252026640

OCLC:

45668822