William Faulkner
曹二伟 曾维坤
Contents
•Life experience
•Writing career
•Awards
•Writing features
•Evaluation
childhood
• Born in New Albany,
Mississippi in 1897
• Moved to Oxford,
Mississippi (prototype
of Yoknapatawpha)
• Influenced by his
family
Yoknapatawpha约克纳帕塔法郡
•
Yoknapatawpha County is actually an
imaginary place based on Faulkner’s hometown
of Oxford.
• In Faulkner’s works, Yoknapatawpha County
has become an allegory or a parable of the
Old South, with which Faulkner has managed
successfully to show a panorama of the
experience and consciousness of the whole
Southern society.
约克纳帕塔法世系
威廉·福克纳一生共写了19部长篇小说
与近百篇短篇小说，其中15部长篇与绝
大多数短篇的故事都发生在约克纳帕塔
法县，称为约克纳帕塔法世系.这个“世
系”以美国南方几个庄园主世家的荣辱
兴衰为主线，表现了一个世纪以来美国
南方社会的历史命运、社会变迁以及各
阶层人物的起伏沉浮，写出了美国南方
地区的典型特征，具有浓厚的乡土气息
。约克纳帕塔法是福克纳作品的标志，
是文学史上有名的虚构地点之一，原型
是他故乡所在的拉斐特郡.
Teenage years
• dropped out of school
• eager to go to World
WarⅠ, however was
declined because of his
height. (1.66 m)
• "Falkner" "Either way
suits me."
Adult
• Poetry writing
• Fiction writing
• worked as a
screenwriter in
Hollywood
Faulkner
Personal life
• Marriage with
Estelle Oldham
• extramarital
affairs
• lifelong drinking
problem
Last days
• served as a Writer-In-Residence
at the University of Virginia in
1957
• died on July 6th, 1962 of a
heart attack
• The United States Postal Service
issued a first-class 22-cent
stamp commemorating his life and
stint as a postmaster
Writing career
• (1) 1924~1929: training as a writer
The Marble Faun
《大理石雕像》
Soldier’s Pay
《士兵的报酬》
Mosquitoes
《蚊群》
• (2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific period
Sartoris
《萨托里斯》
The Sound and the Fury
《喧哗与骚动》
As I Lay Dying
《我弥留之际》
Sanctuary
《圣殿》
Light in August
《八月之光》
Absalom, Absalom
《押沙龙，押沙龙！》
• (3). 1940~end: won recognition in America
A Fable
《寓言》
Go Down, Moses
《去吧！摩西》
Faulkner's most celebrated novels
The Sound and the Fury 《喧嚣与骚动》
书名的典故出自莎士比亚悲剧《麦克白》第5幕第5场麦克
白的有名台词：“人生如痴人说梦，充满着喧哗与骚动，
却没有任何意义。”
多角度的叙述方法
“意识流”手法
“神话模式”手法
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Sound and the Fury
sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of
the 20th century;
His Short story collections
These 13 (1931),
《这十三篇》
includes many of his most acclaimed stories,
including，
•
•
•
•
“A Rose for Emily,” 《一支献给爱米丽的玫瑰》
"Red Leaves,"
《红叶》
"That Evening Sun," 《夕阳》
“Dry September.”
《干燥的九月》
Awards
• One of three finalists for the first Ellery
Queen Mystery Magazine Award(1946).
• Nobel Prize Winner(1949)
• Pulitzer Winner twice:
A Fable (1955)
The Reivers (1963)
• National Book Awards twice:
Collected Stories (1951)
A Fable (1955)
• O. Henry Short Story Prize.
Award-winning Remarks
Faulkner won the 1949 Nobel
Prize for Literature for "his
powerful and
artistically unique
contribution to the
modern American
novel."
• Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
• --- I feel that this award was not made to me as a
man, but to my work -- a life's work in the agony and
sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of
all for profit, but to create out of the materials of
the human spirit something which did not exist before.
---我感觉，这个奖不是授予我这个人，而是授予我的工作，
它是对我呕心沥血、毕生从事的人类精神探索的工作的肯定。
我的这项工作不为名，更不图利，而是要从人类精神的原始素
材里创造出前所未有的东西。
Writing Features
• complex plot
• stream of consciousness
• characterization: he was able to probe
into the psychology of characters
• violation of chronology
• courtroom rhetoric: formal language
• multiple narrations and time shifts
within narrative, circular form (Multiple
Point of View)
• long and embedded sentences, full of
interruptions, complex syntax
Evaluation
• representative of Deep South novels and one
of the most prominent writers of the 20th
century
• one of the most important writers of the
Southern literature of the United States,
along with Mark Twain, Robert Penn Warren,
Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe and
Tennessee Williams.
• a representative of the writers using stream
of consciousness
• the literary traditions ofmodernism and
the Southern Renaissance
Thank you!
Southern Literature
• Southern literature can be defined as
literature about the South, written by
authors who were raised in the South.
• In the 20th century , southern literature
became not only distinguished but very
diverse.
• By 1920s, a literary movement known as
the Southern Renaissance emerged. There
was a domination of southern literature
for at least 4 decades in American
Literature.
Southern Literature
• The Southern Renaissance is featured in its
unique feeling of guilt, failure and poverty as
well.
• Southern Myths
•
a. Chevalier heritage(骑士精神的传承)
•
b. Agrarian virtue（土地的价值）
•
c. Plantation aristocracy （种植园主）
•
d. Lost cause （注定要失败的势力）
•
e. White supremacy （白人至上）
•
f. Purity of womanhood （女人的纯洁）
Southern renaissance
• Representatives:
• Ellen Glasgow, Kate Chopin: precursors to
the movement
• William Faulkner
• Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welt, Carson
McCullers
• Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Conner