Faulkner’s Old
South
The nuts don’t fall
far from the tree.
Biography 1897-1962
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Born in Albany, Miss.; moved
to Oxford, Miss at 5
Aristocratic Southern Family
Rowan Oak (right above)
Great-Grandfather (right
below) twice acquitted of
murder, severe disciplinarian,
dashing soldier, owner of RR,
member of state legislature
(model for Col.Bayard Sartoris)
Bio cont.
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Grandfather =
lawyer, banker, U.S.
attorney; explosive
temper
Faulkner’s
immediate family =
Compson family
Faulkner’s father top
right
Faulkner and his
brother bottom right
Faulkner’s beginnings
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Poor student
Rejected by U.S.
Army for WWI
Served in Canadian
RAF (in uniform at
right)
War ended before he
could serve
A Dubious Educational Career
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Flunks out of Ole Miss
Fails English
Begins writing
Encouragement from
Sherwood Anderson in
New Orleans
He drew the picture
lower right at Ole Miss
for the Red and Blue
Club
Code of Honor of the Old South
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Old families try to maintain pre-civil war
way of life in spite of outcome of civil war
Deserve to fail, die because of the sins
of the South
Whites must bear the burden of guilt of
slavery
On His Writing
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From William Faulkner on the Web
“ . . . What is more intriguing, and at times
frustrating, about this body of work is that he
rewrote so much of it”
“One reason for such interrelatedness in
Faulkner’s work is his conception of
Yoknapatawpha County”
“You have to have somewhere to start from:
then you begin to learn . . . . It don’t matter
where it was, just so you remember it and ain’t
ashamed of it” Sherwood Anderson
Faulkner on his writing
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“Beginning with Sartoris I discovered that
my own little postage stamp of native soil
was worth writing about and that I would
never live long enough to exhaust it . . . .
It opened up a gold mine of other
peoples, so I created a cosmos of my
own. I can move these people around
like God, not only in space but in time
too.”
Yoknapatawpha County:
Yes, you have to spell it correctly!
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Mythical/actual, self-contained
Fictional world with all social,
cultural levels
24,000 sq. miles
15,611 population of Indians,
slaves, plantation owners, Civil
War, WWI, WWII soldiers and
vets, genteel old ladies,
aristocracy, white trash, northern
carpetbaggers
Works
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1926 Soldier’s Pay: 1st novel
about Lost Generation
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1929 Sartoris: Begins saga of
Old South; uncritical account of
Faulkner’s own family legend up
to his own generation; source
book for later novels; great
grandfather
The Sound and The Fury:
manipulates points of view (5);
uses stream of consciousness of
a 33-year old “idiot” named
Benjy; decline of Old South;
failure of love; absence of selfrespect; generational conflict
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Works cont.
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1930 As I Lay Dying:
stream-of-conscious; 15
speakers; Bundren family
takes their dead mother on
a burial journey; grieving,
community, family issues
threatened by flood and
fire
1932 Light in August;
orphan Joe Christmas
searches for his racial
origins; Lena Grove
searches for the father of
her child; many circular
journeys take place here
Works cont.
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1936 Absalom, Absalom!: Race, gender, and past
burdens; tells the story of the Suptens coming to
Yoknapatawpha County and the “grand design” of their
ancestor, Thomas
1942: Go Down, Moses: the story of both black and
white descendents of Lucius McCaslin; miscengenation;
vanishing wilderness
1954 A Fable: Wins the Pulitzer and National Book
Award; allegory of WWI in France; Faulkner wrote it over
10 years; considered it his masterpiece
Themes
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Elementary Christian
virtues of self-respect,
mutual respect,
forgiveness of self
and others, courage
and fortitude, proper
balance between
humility, pride and
charity
Themes cont.
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Accepts Christian moral code but not admiring of
practicing Christians
Despise literal-minded, righteousness; virtues and
vices presented in black and white context of Old
South
Evokes past and relates it to present through
language and fictional world
Involved in long history of torment, suffering and
anguish with endurance, dedication and love
“The problem with the human heart in conflict with
itself.”
Style
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Stream of Consciousness
Scrambled chronology
Multiple pov
Began to be studied in
1946
Won Nobel in 1950 (right)
Died 1962