Forensic Fictions is the first book-length critical study of
William Faulkner's fictional depictions of the legal vocation and
the practice of law. Examining Faulkner's lawyer characters in
light of the southern storytelling tradition, Jay Watson argues
that the forensic competence of the Faulknerian lawyer is a direct
function of his skill as a raconteur.
To trace the biographical and historical roots of Faulkner's
lifelong preoccupation with the legal profession, Watson draws on
contemporary scholarship in narrative, rhetoric, jurisprudence,
legal and intellectual history, literary theory, and Lacanian
psychoanalysis. His approach yields insightful readings of forensic
characters and scenes from such works as "An Odor of Verbena," "The
Hamlet," "Wild Palms," "Absalom, Absalom " and "The Reivers."
Watson shows the links between storytelling and the competence
of Faulkner's legal characters by examining the intertextual logic
that connects the two most important lawyers in the Yoknapatawpha
fiction: the incompetent Horace Benbow and the more capable Gavin
Stevens, whose entrance into Faulkner's oeuvre coincides with
Benbow's untimely departure from it. Focusing on the nine novels in
which these two characters appear, Watson traces the evolutionary
process by which Stevens supplants Benbow. Three of the Stevens
novels--"Intruder in the Dust," "Knight's Gambit," and "Requiem for
a Nun"--from what Watson calls Faulkner's "forensic trilogy" and,
when read together, constitute the writer's most sustained
investigation of the rhetorical and ethical responsibilities of the
lawyer-citizen.
Faulkner, Watson argues, saw the forensic figure as a potential
hybrid of homo loquens and homo politicus, capable of combing the
roles of storyteller, rhetorician, and theatrical performer with
those of critic, citizen, and ethical man. As such, this figure
served as a provocative authorial surrogate through whom Faulkner
could explore diverse and often contradictory aspects of his
personal experience, his family background, his cultural heritage,
and, most of all, his own artistic use of language.
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