Yoknapatawpha blues : Faulkner's fiction and Southern roots music / Tim A. Ryan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ryan, Tim A., 1971- author.

Series:

Southern literary studies.

Southern literary studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music and literature--United States--History--20th century.

Music and literature.

Faulkner, William, 1897-1962--Criticism and interpretation.

Faulkner, William.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the 1920s and 1930s, Mississippi produced two of the most significant influences upon twentieth-century culture: the modernist fiction of William Faulkner and the recorded blues songs of African American musicians like Charley Patton, Geeshie Wiley, and Robert Johnson. In Yoknapatawpha Blues, the first book examining both Faulkner and the music of the south, Tim A. Ryan identifies provocative parallels of theme and subject in diverse regional genres and texts. Placing Faulkner's literary texts and prewar country blues song lyrics on equal footing, Ryan illuminates the meanings of both in new and unexpected ways. He provides close analysis of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 in Faulkner's "Old Man" and Patton's "High Water Everywhere"; racial violence in the story "That Evening Sun" and Wiley's "Last Kind Words Blues"; and male sexual dysfunction in Sanctuary and Johnson's "Dead Shrimp Blues." This interdisciplinary study reveals how the characters of Yoknapatawpha County and the protagonists in blues songs similarly strive to assert themselves in a threatening and oppressive world. By emphasizing the modernism found in blues music and the echoes of black vernacular culture in Faulkner's writing, Yoknapatawpha Blues links elucidates the impact of both Faulkner's fiction and roots music on the culture of the modern South, and of the nation.

Contents:

Introduction: The rise of the boll weevil

Homers of the cotton fields: William Faulkner and the blues in twentieth-century America

Backwater rising, men sinking down: the great Mississippi flood in "Old man" and "High water everywhere"

See my baby from the other side: the ghosts of lynching in "That evening sun" and "Last kind words blues"

All my shrimps was dead and gone: male sexual dysfunction in sanctuary and "Dead shrimp blues"

Lost lightning: self-reflexivity and southern nostalgia in The back door wolf and The reivers

Conclusion: A long loop down into the Delta.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807160282

0807160288

9780807160268

0807160261

OCLC:

904033581