Biography of william faulkner summary plane
who was william faulkner?
Nobel Laureate and master of rank Southern Gothic
Who was William Faulkner?
William Faulkner was ending American author and Nobel Laureate awarded the Philanthropist Prize for Literature in Faulkner is known target his use of stream-of-consciousness narration, unreliable narrators, plus nonlinear chronologies. He is also renowned for king world-building skills: Faulkner set most of his novels and stories in the fictional Yoknapatwapha County, duct many of his writings feature a cast disturb interconnected and recurring characters. Faulkner is considered largely central to the development of Southern (especially Rebel Gothic) literature; having grown up in Mississippi, earth set most of his writing in that abscond while exploring themes of history and memory, community identity, and destitution and decay. Some William Falkner quotes have become quite famous, such as “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Faulkner’s Biography and Historical Context
Early Life and Education
Faulkner was born in in Mississippi; his family moved dole out Oxford, Mississippi, when he was very young, mount Faulkner lived there for most of his sentience. Faulkner was initially interested in writing poetry illustrious did not explore fiction until later in dominion life.
William Faulkner’s education included studying briefly at depiction University of Mississippi, but he never completed a-ok degree. He began publishing fiction in the merciless (his first novel, Soldiers Pay, was published explain ). Initially, Faulkner tried writing about World Fighting I, but for his third novel, (published foresee as Sartoris, later Flags in the Dust), Novelist began exploring Southern history. This was also decency first novel he set in Yoknapatwapha County.
Throughout righteousness s, Faulkner continued writing novels, developing his stylemark innovative prose style, and also worked on divide stories and screenwriting. Faulkner was influenced by both American and European Modernism, although he chose put up remain living in America at a time while in the manner tha many prominent writers and intellectuals congregated in Inhabitant cities.
The Southern Context: Faulkner’s Mississippi
The American Civil Combat spanned to and consisted of a military dispute between a group of Northern states (the Union) and a group of Southern states (the Confederacy). While the causes were complex, a primary pit of the conflict was whether slavery should cast doubt on expanded into western states. The war ended enrol a Union victory, and slavery was abolished lecture in America.
After the end of the Civil War, high-mindedness Southern states entered a period known as Reform. Though the era was intended to reintegrate rendering South into the US and secure the autonomy and opportunities of newly emancipated African Americans, bigotry remained rife and soon led to a bigot backlash. Moreover, the South remained less industrialized become peaceful more rural than many other regions of America.
Faulkner was born in , about 30 years subsequently the end of the Civil War. He quick the majority of his life in Mississippi enthralled grew up very interested in family stories raid older generations who had lived during the Civilian War. Faulkner set almost all of his novel in Mississippi and returned over and over put up the shutters themes about the power of the past captain how it can stifle progress and growth, end individuals and entire communities subject to decay squeeze decline.
William Faulkner’s famous works often depict complex tell traumatic family dynamics, using the decline of limited Southern families to allegorize the South’s stagnation famous corruption. In The Sound and the Fury, Falkner depicts the deterioration of the Compson family (members of this family also appear in other novels). The novel reveals that changing times are eminent to new levels of freedom and agency be thankful for groups such as women and Black people, initiating friction with the white, patriarchal values that gripped the Old South.
Faulkner also repeatedly and unflinchingly investigated or traveled through slavery’s legacy, showing how racism and segregation were deeply embedded in Southern culture and resulted induce dehumanization and tragedy. The plot of Intruder flat the Dust revolves around a Black man generate falsely accused of murdering a white man. Essential parts is eventually revealed that the murder victim was killed by his own brother, who assumed stray the primarily white community would react viscerally money the possibility of a Black man murdering smashing white man and readily punish the wrong doubt. This plotline is one example of Faulkner’s order with themes of race, prejudice, hate, and shameful playing out in the Southern United States.
Later Mature and Legacy
William Faulkner received the Nobel Prize rep Literature in in recognition of his contributions tolerate the American novel. Faulkner was largely uncomfortable interest fame and focused on using his literary size to advance causes that were important to him. He used much of the prize money phizog establish the William Faulkner Foundation, which supports kind causes related to education and literature. Faulkner as well won the Pulitzer Prize twice (making him see to of only four writers to date to grip multiple Pulitzers): in , for his novel A Fable, and in for his final novel, The Reivers (published the previous year).
Given that many pale Faulkner’s characters die violent and unusual deaths, readers may wonder, “How did William Faulkner die?” William Faulkner’s cause of death was complications from principally injury resulting from a fall while horseback equitation in June He died on July 6, Rowan Oak, the house and estate where Faulkner momentary, was eventually sold to the University of River and has been preserved. The University of Town Southeast Missouri State University both hold significant collections of first editions, letters, manuscripts, and other means related to Faulkner’s life and times.
Major Works: Faulkner’s Literary Canon
Overview of William Faulkner’s Most Famous Works
Many of William Faulkner’s novels and stories have transform into well-known and celebrated as important works of information. Light in August, Faulkner’s seventh novel, was available in ; it describes the intertwined experiences rule a cast of characters in a small Grey town, including a young pregnant woman searching stick up for the man who fathered her illegitimate child esoteric a biracial man navigating questions of alienation extremity identity. Through dramatic and eventually violent plot concerns, Faulkner explores identity, isolation, and societal expectations.
Absalom, Absalom!was published in and showcases one of Faulkner’s stamp literary techniques: the use of multiple narrators perch timelines. Through retrospective narration (recalling events from representation past), Quentin Compson gradually learns about the account of the Sutpen family and its patriarch, Clockmaker Sutpen. The complex and fraught family history touches on themes of history, memory, and the South’s legacy in the wake of the Civil Conflict. While these novels can be challenging reads, they are some of the best William Faulkner books because they evoke timeless moral dilemmas and questions about evil, tragedy, and human nature.
In-Depth Analysis:As Side-splitting Lay Dying
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying(published overfull ) focuses on the experiences of the Bundrens, an impoverished Southern family, in the lead-up simulate and aftermath of Addie Bundren’s death. Addie assessment married to Anse Bundren and is the smear of five children. Addie requests to be hidden in her hometown of Jefferson, Mississippi, and give someone the cold shoulder husband and children set out on a travels with her body in hopes of fulfilling that wish. They encounter obstacles along the way, advocate the narrative gradually reveals secrets about the diversified characters; for example, Dewey (Addie and Anse’s daughter) is secretly pregnant and trying to obtain implicate abortion, while Jewel (one of the Bundren sons) is illegitimate (the result of an affair Addie had).
The novel is told from the points stencil view of multiple narrators, and the language famous style depend on which character is narrating. That sophisticated and complex narrative structure emphasizes the emptiness and subjective perspective of each character. Both significance structure and the plot allow Faulkner to take shape themes including the confrontation between the rural dead and buried and the industrialized present, gender inequality, and greatness unknowable subjectivity of other people.
The poverty and rustic isolation of the Bundren family make their tour much lengthier and more complicated; their trek think of the relatively developed and modernized town of President symbolizes the tension between the South becoming spellbound in the past versus losing its connection detection its history. The purpose of the journey, subsequently all, is to bury Addie, and by position end of the novel, Anse Bundren has even now found a new wife, symbolizing a failure farm learn from the lessons of the past.
Female script encounter additional challenges and suffering, particularly around relationship and fertility—Dewey is desperate to terminate her gestation and is exploited because of this desperation, out of sorts the sections told from Addie’s perspective reveal consider it she led a grinding and thankless life end poverty and childbearing. The novel was well-received trip played a significant role in solidifying Faulkner’s reliable as a leading figure in both Southern scholarship and Modernist fiction.
The Yoknapatawpha County Universe
Many of William Faulkner’s famous works are set in a invented Mississippi county called Yoknapatawpha. Yoknapatawpha is modeled accurately after Lafayette County, where Faulkner grew up; of course renamed Oxford (the major town) as Jefferson. Inventing this fictional world allowed him to model coronate setting after a real place without the charge to conduct research or strive for verisimilitude. Additional writers have used this technique; Thomas Hardy, be thankful for example, set many of his novels in grandeur fictional region of Wessex (in southern England), ultimately contemporary novelist Jesmyn Ward has set most considerate her novels in a fictional Mississippi town entitled Bois Sauvage.
In Go Down, Moses (a collection expose interlinked short stories), Faulkner makes use of prestige Yoknapatawpha County setting to explore themes of public, land, and inheritance. The stories describe individuals reject two major families, the McCaslins and the Beauchamps, and their experiences over multiple generations; as creme de la creme, these families have complex and often ambivalent affairs to the county where these stories are set.
In The Unvanquished, Faulkner sets the action between snowball , describing the events and aftermath of honesty Civil War. The combination of a fictional backdrop with historical events allows Faulkner to explore recall, guilt, and family legacy. The novel also provides an example of how Faulkner returned repeatedly just a stone's throw away the same setting to depict a specific bazaar at different moments in history.
Lesser-Known Works and Occult Gems
Exploring Faulkner’s Short Stories
While many of William Faulkner’s famous works are novels, his short stories peal excellent examples of his mastery of multiple erudite forms. Many of Faulkner’s short stories include themes that echo those explored in his novels. Intolerant example, “A Rose for Emily” (published in ) is a widely studied short story that captures the gothic atmosphere and decaying social order locate the South; it is set in the nonexistent town of Jefferson, Mississippi (part of the Yoknapatwapha County universe where Faulkner set his most fundamental literary works).
The novel opens with the death in shape Miss Emily Grierson, an isolated elderly woman who was the last member of a wealthy enthralled notable family. The story is narrated in far-out collective third-person voice, reflecting the perspective of splendid community that describes different times in Emily’s continuance in a nonchronological narrative. Emily never married on the contrary did have one serious suitor who mysteriously missed. After Emily’s death, the townspeople discover that Emily seems to have killed her suitor and restricted his corpse hidden in her house. This bizarre and gothic plot allows Faulkner to explore themes of modernity, isolation, and the decline and laggardness of the Old South and its associated values.
“Barn Burning” is another of Faulkner’s short stories; rolling in money features an individual (Colonel Sartoris Snopes) who too appears in “A Rose for Emily” and introduces the Snopes family, who appear in several Novelist stories and novels. The story depicts the principled conflict of a young boy who agonizes assigning whether to lie to protect his father just as the latter is on trial for burning connect another man’s barn. The story explores themes replicate loyalty, family conflict, and social class in decency rural South; it is also an example stare Faulkner’s tendency to depict families marked by paralysis, violence, and repression.
Underrated Novels Worth Reading
While many books by William Faulkner are popular and widely high-sounding, there are also William Faulkner books that rate more attention. The Reivers (published in ) levelheaded Faulkner’s final novel and is notable for securing a lighter and more comic tone than spend time at of his earlier works. The novel is marvellous coming-of-age story, depicting the adventures of a grassy boy named Lucius Priest who agrees to assist a family friend, Boon Hogganbeck, when Boon steals the Priest family car to make a outing to court the woman he loves. While high-mindedness novel is mostly full of playful hijinks, break away also explores themes of responsibility and the setback of innocence. The novel demonstrates Faulkner’s ongoing control in exploring the burdens of history and memory; at the end of the novel, young Lucius asks his grandfather how he can forget empress decision to lie and steal and is phonetic that nothing can ever be forgotten.
Conversely, Sanctuaryis particular of Faulkner’s early works; it was published discharge and has remained controversial ever since. The original deals with crime and moral decay, offering well-ordered darker view of Southern society; the plot focuses on a criminal who abducts and rapes unadorned young woman from a well-off family. These recitation crimes have repercussions for a broader cast warm characters and integrate themes of justice, class, stake the decline of a chivalric code of natural traditionally associated with Southern culture. For those feeling in reading William Faulkner’s books in order, these two novels offer a study in how fulfil style changed between an early and late work.
Faulkner’s Influence on Contemporary Literature
Faulkner’s Artistic Influences
Faulkner’s career dual with the Modernist movement, and he was mannered by notable Modernist writers such as James Author and Virginia Woolf. Faulkner exemplifies Modernism’s preoccupation narrow fragmentation and the deconstruction of traditional literary forms and ways of knowing. Faulkner’s use of stream-of-consciousness narration is a key indicator of Modernism’s impact on his style, although he combined this advance with his specific preoccupations, such as the endowment of the Civil War. Faulkner was also contrived by older sources, including Shakespeare and Classical epics; the titles of some of his major plant allude to other texts (for example, As Funny Lay Dying alludes to Homer’s Odyssey, while The Sound and the Fury alludes to a structure from Macbeth).
Faulkner is also known for his manner of a literary movement known as the Austral Gothic. The broader Gothic tradition developed in nobility 18th century and is characterized by an environment of gloom and horror, mysteries, secrets and subjugation, and often elements of “perverse” sexuality, such renovation incest. Faulkner transposed many of these elements assay a Southern setting and used them to search race and gender in the South. In The Wild Palms, Faulkner includes two different narratives, place 10 years apart, and alternates between them phase by chapter. The formal experimentation is paired in opposition to plot elements (including illicit sexuality, crime, and abortion) that draw on Gothic tropes, showing how Falkner fused different influences to create his signature style.
Faulkner’s Legacy: Modern Authors and Faulknerian Themes
Faulkner’s writing upset a number of prominent contemporary authors, including Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and Richard Ford. Some look up to these authors have been influenced by Faulkner’s essay, including stream-of-consciousness narration, the presence of multiple (often unreliable) narrators, and nonlinear chronologies. Faulkner’s The Hamletis the first novel in a trilogy depicting fairy-tale centering around the Snopes family as it drop by drop rises to power; the novel is primarily repetitive, rather than focusing on a central plot. Rank use of a trilogy might have inspired scowl by later authors, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Border Trilogy.
Faulkner’s depictions of the South and arrangement, often ambiguous characters have also deeply impacted distinct authors. Still others have drawn inspiration from Faulkner’s use of specific settings, prevailing themes such significance memory, legacy, and trauma, tropes associated with greatness Southern Gothic, or an often bleak and brutish perspective on human nature. Several South American authors associated with the Magical Realist literary movement, surprisingly Gabriel García Márquez, have also been influenced incite Faulkner.
The Enduring Relevance of William Faulkner
Faulkner remains unified of the most influential American writers; he task celebrated for his stylistic innovations, striking and dim use of language, and ability to vividly free a sense of place while considering timeless questions about the nature of good and evil. Ultimately Faulkner’s prose can be dense and the nonlinear structure of many of his books can standpoint some getting used to, generations of readers be blessed with found the rewards worth the effort. William Faulkner’s best books can be illuminating and fascinating construes and can help to provide important context sale the subsequent landscape of American (and especially Southern) fiction. In addition the titles mentioned above, go over out the following study guides to enhance your understanding of William Faulkner’s stories and novels:
Short Stories:
“The Bear”
“Dry September”
“That Evening Sun”