Southern Literature
I. Heritage
American southern literature can date back to Edgar Allen Poe, and reach its summit with the appearance of the two “giants” – Faulkner and Wolfe. There are southern women writers – Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O’Connor.
II. Southern Myths – guilt, failure, poverty
1. Chevalier [w]heritage
[/w]2. Agrarian virtue
3. Plantation aristocracy
4. Lost cause
5. White supremacy
6. Purity of womanhood
Southern literature: twisted, pessimistic, violent, distorted
Gothic novel: Poe
III. William Faulkner
1. life
2. literary career: three stages
(1) 1924~1929: training as a writer
The Marble Faun
Soldie's Pay
Mosquitoes
(2) 1929~1936: most productive and prolific period
Sartoris
The Sound and the Fury
As I Lay Dying
Light in August
Absalom, Absalom
(3) 1940~end: won recognition in America
Go Down, Moses
3. point of view
He generally shows a grim picture of human society where violence and cruelty are frequently included, but his later works showed more optimism. His intention was to show the evil, harsh events in contrast to such eternal virtues as love, honour, pity, compassion, self-sacrifice, and thereby expose the faults of society. He felt that it was a writer’s duty to remind his readers constantly of true values and virtues.
4. themes
(1) history and race
He explains the present by examining the past, by telling the stories of several generations of family to show how history changes life. He was interested in the relationship between blacks and whites, especially concerned about the problems of the people who were of the mixed race of black and white, unacceptable to both races.
(2) Deterioration
(3) Conflicts between generations, classes, races, man and environment
(4) Horror, violence and the abnormal
5. style/features of his works
(1) complex plot
(2) stream of [w]consciousness
[/w](3) multiple point of view, circular form
(4) violation of chronology
(5) courtroom rhetoric: formal language
(6) characterization: he was able to probe into the psychology of characters
(7) “anti-hero”: weak, fable, vulnerable (true people in modern society)
He has a group of women writers following him, including O’Connor and Eudora Welty
Section 2 The 1930s
Radical 1930s
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