21WilliamFaulkner福克纳解析.docx

1、21WilliamFaulkner福克纳解析William Faulkner (1897-1962) William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi and raised in nearby Oxford, and lived there almost all his life. Faulkner left school in his tee ns and had no further formal education beyond a year (1919-1920) as a special student at the Unive

2、rsity of Mississippi.William Faulkner (1897-1962) The fact that William Faulkner was bom into a Southern family with a fairly long tradition is perhaps the most important of all the in flue nces that made him a major writer in American literature.William Faulkner (1897-1962) The town of Oxford where

3、 he was brought up became the model for his fictional Jefferson, the seat of 丫oknapatawpha county. His own family history found its way into his novels and the members of his family proved to be prototypes for his characters.William Faulkner (1897-1962) Faulkners knowledge of the life of the America

4、n Deep South, with its tragic history of rise and fall in its fortunes, its ways and mores, and its language, all fused in his imagination and recreated, became the substanee of a Faulkneria n world strangely in spiring both nostalgia and a sense of impending doom in modern readersWilliam Faulkner (

5、1897-1962) Most of Faulknefs works are set in the American South, with his emphasis on the Southern subjects and consciousness, and they are about people from a small region in Northern Mississippi, Yoknapatawpha County, which is actually an imaginary placeWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) With his rich

6、imagination, Faulkner turned the land, the people and the history of the region into a literary creation and mythical kingdom. As a result, 丫oknapatawpha Country has become an allegory or a parable of the Old South, with which Faulkner has managed successfully to show a panorama of the experience an

7、d consciousness of the whole Southern societyWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) The Yokanapatawpha County series have an overall pattern in which the fate of a ruined homeland always focuses on the collision of Faulknefs intelligent, sensitive, and idealistic protagonists with the society of the 20th cent

8、uryWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) Almost all his heroes turn out to be tragic because they are prisoners of the past, or of the society, or of some social and moral taboos, or of their own in trospective pers on alities.William Faulkner (1897-1962) His first two novels, Soldiers Pay and Mosquitoes (19

9、27), were not very promising, but Sartoris (1929) revealed Faulkners fuller development as a writer. For the first time he entered his fictional country and began to create a world of his own.William Faulkner (1897-1962) With Sartoris his training as a writer came to a close. His next book, The Soun

10、d and the Fury (1929), was definitely the mature work of a major author.William Faulkner (1897-1962) In 1930 As I Lay Dying came out, and what had apparently begun to worry him was the lack of critical acclaim for his work. He then contrived the sexually aggressive and sensational plot of Sanctury (

11、1931) to shock the public into a kind of recognition.William Faulkner (1897-1962)William Faulkner (1897-1962) Of Faulkners literary works, 3 novels are masterpieces:The Sound and the Fury D Light in August 匚 Absalom, Absalom!Go Down, MosesWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) Here the deep South is delineate

12、d in as minute detail as possible Indeed, Faulkners works have been termed the Yoknapatawpha saga,uone connected story,” one “mythical kingdom.William Faulkner (1897-1962) He writes about the histories of a number of southern aristocratic families and traces them back to the very beginning when the

13、Chickasaw Indians were still lawful owners of the land.William Faulkner (1897-1962) In the very rise of these family fortunes, Faulkner sees their in evitable fall. These white settlers may have dreamed, built great houses with confidence and courage, and achieved a degree of success in their golden

14、 past, but they can not escape the defeat to which they are doomed from the very outset, for they have displaced the Indians and enslaved the Black raceWilliam Faulkner (1897-1962) What Faulkner is talking about concerns not merely the American South but the human situation in general. The spiritual

15、 deterioration which characterizes modern life stems directly from the loss of love and want of emotional response.The Sound and the FuryThe Sound and the Fury Quentin*s section offers a good illustration. A miserable creature in the modern world, Quentin frequently casts a backward glance at the ti

16、me of his childhood when life was innocent, romantic, and secure He just cannot bring himself to come to terms with the present when is, to him, purposeless, futile, and devoid of the values which make life worth livingThe Sound and the Fury His suicide offers an example of a complete negation of th

17、e present. In a sense, Quentins value system may represent Faulkners own idea of an ideal way of life, that of an ante-bellum society.The Sound and the Fury With the story of Jas on whose life embodies all the vices of the modern world, the contrast between the ante-bellum society and the present on

18、e is brought out in the most poignant manner possible. The triumph of rationalism over feeling and compassion is best illustrated in this sterile and loveless individual.The Sound and the Fury Faulkner once said that TheSound and the Fury is a story of ulost innocenceM which proves itself to be an i

19、ntensification of the theme of imprisonment in the past.Faulkners Style Faulkner has always been regarded as a man with great might of invention and experimentation. He added to the theory of the novel as an art form and evolved his own literary strategies. To him, the primary duty of a writer was t

20、o explore and represe nt the infinite possibilities inhere nt in huma n life Therefore a writer should observe with no judgment whatsoever and reduce authorial intrusion to the lowest minimum.Faulkners Style The most characteristic way of structuring his stories is to fragment the chronological time

21、. He deliberately broke up the chrono logy of his narrative by juxtaposing the past with the present, in the way the montage does in a movie. The modern stream-of- consciousness technique was also frequently and skillfully exploited by Faulkner to emphasize the reactions and inner musings of the nar

22、rator.Faulkners Style Moreover, Faulkner was good at presenting multiple points of view, which gave the story a circular form, wherein one event is centered, with various points of view radiating from it, or different people responding to the same story.Faulkners Style Thus a high degree could be re

23、ached The other narrative techniques Faulkner used to con struct his stories include symbolism and mythological and biblical allusions.A Rose for Emily A Rose for Emily is Faulkners first short story published in 1930. Set in the town of Jeffers on in 丫oknapatawpha, the story focuses on Emily Griers

24、on, an eccentric spinster who refuses to accept the passage of time, or the inevitable change and loss that accompanies it.A Rose for Emily As a descendant of the Southern aristocracy, Emily is typical of those in Faulkners Yoknapatawpah stories who are the symbols of the Old South but the prisoners

25、 of the past. In this story, Faulkner makes best use of the Gothic devices in narrati on.Quote 1 When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectable affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her house,

26、 which no one save an old man servanta combined gardener and cookhad seen in at least ten years. (Selected Readings 617-618)Quote 2 Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair. (Selected Readings 629)