Influence On William Faulkner

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Many writers work have influenced many people. One author in particular that has influenced many people over the last 50 plus years, is William Faulkner. William is known for his play on words, and his theme. Faulkner is also known as one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century. A Fable, which is his greatest work, won a Pulitzer Prize. Faulkner was raised as a southern boy, whose writing was influenced by two people and one major event, his greatest work A Fable. Preeminent figure in the twentieth century American literature, Faulkner created a complex and profound body of work in which he often explored exploration and corruption in the south. Many of his novels and short stories are set in Yoknapatawpha County, a fictional place …show more content…

“Mark Twain was a direct influence on William Faulkner” (Faulkner, William; Enotes) “Nearly a year after the publication of Soldiers’ Pay. Mark Twain inspired the publication of Mosquitoes” (Wilkoski, Wiki). William Faulkner’s most famous theme is “The South.” William Faulkner has been credited with having the imagination to see, before other serious writers saw, the tremendous potential for drama, pathos, and sophisticated humor in the history and people of the South. In using this material and, in the process, suggesting to others how it might be used, he has also been credited with sparking the Southern Renaissance of literary achievement that has produced much of the United States best literature in the twentieth …show more content…

Due to its elements of mystery, suspense, and macabre, it has enjoyed a popular appeal. This was William Faulkner’s first story published in a major magazine, The Forum, but received little attention from the public. After several revisions and republishing, it started to gain popularity and is now looked back as on as one of the stories that jump started his career. Emily Grierson, an aging southern belle, murders the lover who spurned her and sleeps beside his decaying body for a number of years is only the most sensational aspect of the story. What is more interesting to the serious reader of Faulkner is the interplay between Emily Grierson and the two generations of townspeople who attempt to cope with her-one the old guard and the other a new generation with “modern ideas.” (Enotes-William Faulkner) The story, is a comment on the postbellum South, which inherited the monstrous code of values, glossed over by fine words about honor and glory, that characterized the slave era; that postbellum South learns to ignore the unsavory elements of its past by ignoring Emily the recluse and murderess and by valorizing the romantic “tableau.” This is however, a complex matter. The new generation, a generation excluded from the code of honor, valor, and decorum that the old Confederates believed to have sustained them and excluded from the benefits that were to be gained

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