This book gathers together twelve recent and classic essays on Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust, which he termed "a mystery-murder" whose theme concerns a "relationship between Negro and white, specifically or rather the premise being that the white people in the south, before the North or the govt. or anyone else, owe and must pay a responsibility to the Negro." These essays provide a rich set of resources to teachers who wish to assign this text, as well as to provide food for thought and discussion to individual readers and scholars of Faulkner.

The essays in this volume are indicative of the scope of international scholarship concerning the works of William Faulkner. They reflect particularly the distinctive and somewhat varying views that American and European scholars have of the Nobel Prize author.

The nine papers included, a representative sampling of those delivered at the First International Colloquium on William Faulkner, articulate the relationship between Faulkner and idealism. All appear in English, either having been presented in English or translated so that they will be more accessible to American readers.

The conference was convened in March 1980 at the University of Paris, and the scholars from both sides of the Atlantic came to realize not only that there were respective attitudes toward Faulkner's fiction but also that there was no single concept of idealism by which they might gauge Faulkner. Thus, as Gresset and Samway state in their introduction, "The colloquium was no demonstration of a theorem already proved, but rather a chance to pose a theoretical problem and then for variables that might be part of the understanding of the nature of the problem."

For instance, the paper presented by Joseph Blotner, the keynote speaker, finds that Faulkner's idealism is "based on a conception of things as they are or as one would wish them to be." Andre Bleikasten offers another view of idealism, one stressing ideology. "Writing," he says, "can neither subvert nor dismiss ideology." Thus the nine essays bear witness to a spectrum of views and approaches one can take in using only recent critical theory and a close reading of Faulkner's texts.
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This richly detailed outline of William Faulkner's life is written by an eminent French scholar who brings new insights to the Nobel Laureate's career and writings.
This book is intended to be a quick reference guide to Faulkner's works as they relate to his life. Principally an outline of a literary career, it will serve as a useful aid for students beginning a study of Faulkner's novels. It gives emphasis year-by-year to the main events in his life and to his professional activity. For the major works Gresset gives an account of the inception, composition, revisions, and publication. In addition, to summarize Faulkner's publications in a given year, Gresset provides a list of the fiction published during the period.

From the time of Faulkner's death in 1962 through 1984 the chronology provides a publishing history of new original Faulkner material as well as information about important books and events that relate to Faulkner.

"The figure that looms behind this "Chronology,"" Gresset says in his introduction, "is that of a hard-gutted and hard-fisted little man whose rather unhappy life may well have found only in literature ... the deep satisfaction ... that he never ceased to yearn after."

Michel Gresset, the author of "Faulkner ou la fascination, I: Poetique de regard," edited volume one of the Pleiade edition of Faulkner in France.