The Six Commonplaces for Literary Inquiry text: “Barn Burning”
Contemptus
Mundi
Complexity
Appearance/
Reality
Even in slavery days, Abner Snopes resorted to thievery
To name a child Colonel, as in Colonel Sartoris Snopes
Major de Spain’s incredulity at being “sued by one of his own tenants” (346). the sporadic course of a Lilliputian mowing machine,” which is something of a mirror image of all of the miles of land Abner and family have plowed and harvested
The sorrel mare is used to signify Major de Spain
Everywhereness
Paradigm
Paradox
Hereditary, inherent qualities: race, class hatred; mannerisms
Blood: “the old blood which he had not been permitted to choose for himself” (347).
Smell of cheese at store; eating cheese and crackers
Faulkneraian expressions of Time: diurnal, seasonal, eternal
Marxist critique: sharecropping = synthesis aftermath slave economy: “I reckon I’ll have a word with the man that aims to begin tomorrow owning me body and soul for the next eight months” (342).
Feminist critique:
ENGL 150/PSO English 4
Six Commonplaces
Teall - 2010