With this study Karl F. Zender offers fresh readings of individual
novels, themes, and motifs while also assessing the impact of
recent politicized interpretations on our understanding of
Faulkner's achievement. Sympathetically acknowledging the need to
decenter the canon, Zender's searching interrogation of current
theory clears a breathing space for Faulkner and his readers
between the fustier remnants of New Criticism and the excesses of
post-structuralism. Each chapter opens with a balanced presentation
of the genuine gifts contemporary theory has bestowed on our
comprehension of a particular novel or problem in Faulkner
criticism and then proceeds with a groundbreaking reading. "The
Politics of Incest" challenges older psychoanalytic interpretations
of Faulkner's use of the incest motif, and "Faulkner's Privacy"
defends the novelist's difficulty or "reticence" as an aesthetic
resistance against the rude candor of deregionalized and
depersonalized culture. Subsequent chapters take up the volatile
issues of Faulkner's representations of women and of African
Americans, and a close reading of the classic "Barn Burning"
critiques the current tendency to blur the concepts of patriarchy
and paternity. The elegiac final chapter, "Where is Yoknapatawpha
County?" draws on a comparison with John Updike's Pennsylvania
fiction and a reading of Joan Williams's The Wintering to explore
Faulkner's disinclination to represent the quotidian realities of
southern life in his later novels. Zender shows that Faulkner's
stylistic withdrawal attempts to "transform into beauty" his
alienation from the postwar world and his fear of aging. That
Faulkner and the Politics of Reading itself recovers and gives new
luster to Faulkner's beauty will surely please, in the author's
words, "those readers . . . for whom literature is less a mechanism
of social change than a source of pleasure." The originality of its
critical vision will inspire Faulkner scholars, students of
American literature, and general readers.
General
| Imprint: |
Louisiana State University Press
|
| Country of origin: |
United States |
| Release date: |
October 2023 |
| Authors: |
Karl F. Zender
• Scott Romine
|
| Dimensions: |
216 x 140mm (L x W) |
| Pages: |
200 |
| ISBN-13: |
978-0-8071-8044-0 |
| Categories: |
Books
|
| LSN: |
0-8071-8044-0 |
| Barcode: |
9780807180440 |
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