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William Faulkner was able to achieve what no man before him and few men after him were able to do. He not only wrote some of the most important and influential American literature in history; he spun stories that depicted to the world the inner workings of the Southern mentality. Faulkner pioneered many literary as well as psychological fronts in a way that is unmatched even today. William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and twice the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, once in 1955 and then again in 1963(Minter). Faulkner’s works, although now uncommonly read by American youths, show not only the socioeconomic aspects of rural life in the South but also a way of life and a collection of mindsets still affecting Southern culture, views, practices, and even everyday life.
Born on September 25, 1897, to Murry Cuthbert Faulkner and Maud Butler Faulkner, in New Albany, near Oxford, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life, William Faulkner became one of the most influential authors in American literature (Minter). Faulkner spent his childhood listening to stories told by family and neighbors. Most of these stories revolved around his prominent great-grandfather, “The Colonel”, who was a Civil War hero and the owner of a plantation. In response to these stories, William Faulkner invented a fictitious county which showed the world the effect that the past was having, and some would say is still having, on the Deep South and the population and social classes thereof. Many residents of Oxford and surrounding towns often stated how they remembered hearing under different pretenses almost every story told within the bindings of Faulkner’s novels.
During Faulkner’s schoolyard years, although athletic, he was often dis...
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...iterature. He is also artfully skillful at giving the world a glimpse of insight into the macabre and taboo that is often ignored when taking an outside viewpoint of a person’s life. Faulkner’s many talents as an author have led to numerous awards and have solidified his place as one of the most influential and noteworthy authors in American literary history.
Works Cited
“Novelist William Faulkner Was Born.” Novelist William Faulkner was Born. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
“William Faulkner – Biographical.” William Faulkner – Biographical. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2014
Minter, David. “William Faulkner.” American National Biography (from Oxford University Press): Research Starters. Web. 18 Apr. 2014
Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! New York: Modern Library, 1951. Print.
Faulkner, William. Light in August: The Corrected Text. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.
Faulkner, William. "Barn Burning." The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. 3th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 1554-66.
16. James Hinkle and Robert McCoy, Reading Faulkner: The Unvanquished. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 141.
Gwynn, Frederick L., and Joseph Blotner, eds. Faulkner in the University. Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1959.
William Faulkner is widely considered to be one of the great American authors of the twentieth century. Although his greatest works are identified with a particular region and time (Mississippi in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), the themes he explores are universal. He was also an extremely accomplished writer in a technical sense. Novels such as The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! Feature bold experimentation with shifts in time and narrative. Several of his short stories are favorites of anthologists, including "A Rose for Emily." This strange story of love, obsession, and death is a favorite among both readers and critics. The narrator, speaking for the town of Jefferson in Faulkner 's fictional Yoknapatawpha
In his Novel Prize Address, Faulkner states that an author must leave "no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart...love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." He accuses his younger contemporaries of ignoring these noble spiritual pillars while pondering the atomic doom of mankind with questions like, "When will I be blown up?" Such physical fears, far from conflicts of the heart, are what plague his bomb-obsessed contemporaries. Yet Faulkner stands, seemingly alone, in opposition to this weakness; he "decline[s] to accept the end of man" and in rebelling, fights for the old universal truths and the glories of the past. In classical style, he brushes away passing fears and fads, settling for nothing less than the "problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." Nothing else is worth writing about and Faulkner's work is living proof.
On September 25, 1897 in New Albany, Mississippi, a son was born to Murry Cuthbert and Maud Butler Faulkner. This baby, born into a proud, genteel Southern family, would become a mischievous boy, an indifferent student, and drop out of school; yet “his mother’s faith in him was absolutely unshakable. When so many others easily and confidently pronounced her son a failure, she insisted that he was a genius and that the world would come to recognize that fact” (Zane). And she was right. Her son would become one of the most exalted American writers of the 20th century, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature and two Pulitzers during his lifetime. Her son was William Faulkner.
William Faulkner was a twentieth century American author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Most famous for his novel The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner defines Southern literature. In his mythical county of Yaknapatawpha, Faulkner contrasted the past with the present era. The past was represented in Emily Grierson, Colonel Sartoris, the Board of Alderman, and the Negro servant. Homer Barron, the new Board of Alderman, and the new sheriff represented the present.
"William Faulkner (1897-1962)." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena Krstovic. Vol. 97. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. 1-3. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Hempfield High School. 31 March 2010.
Born on September 25th, 1897 in Albany, New York, William Faulkner eventually became known for his “vivid imagination and innovative use of language” in literature (Puchner 371). In his adult life, he moved to Mississippi. It is in early 1930’s that he first introduced a peculiar white family that lived in Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi; they are known as the Snopeses. This fictional town and family are seen multiple times throughout Faulkner’s work, and are said to represent the many flaws of life such as “murders, lynchings, and bestialities” (Puchner 373). One of his short stories in particular, “Spotted Horses”, started the era of the Snopes family. The tall tale is centered around the unbroken horses, but why? What is the relevancy of them?
William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi on September 25, 1897. His family moved to Oxford, Mississippi when Faulkner was five years old (Larinde). His parents were Murry and Maud Falkner (Zane 2). Faulkner added the "u" to his last name on his Royal Air Force application for unknown reasons (5).
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.
Growing up in Mississippi in the late Nineteenth Century and the early part of the Twentieth Century, young William Faulkner witnessed first hand the struggles his beloved South endured through their slow progression of rebuilding. These experiences helped to develop Faulkner’s writing style. “Faulkner deals almost exclusively with the Southern scene (with) the Civil War … always behind his work” (Warren 1310. His works however are not so much historical in nature but more like folk lore. This way Faulkner is not constrained to keep details accurate, instead he manipulate the story to share his on views leading the reader to conclude morals or lessons from his experience. Faulkner writes often and “sympathetically of the older order of the antebellum society. It was a society that valued honor, (and) was capable of heroic action” (Brooks 145) both traits Faulkner admired. These sympathetic views are revealed in the story “A Rose for Emily” with Miss Emily becoming a monument for the Antebellum South.
...However, this doesn’t deter Faulkner from writing very complex stories that reflect his literary prowess. Most of his characters can hardly speak correct English, and yet, his pieces are filled with words that even I have trouble discerning meaning from. In particular, Rider’s character is very blue collar. Faulkner communicates this to us in many ways, but has no trouble throwing in phrases like “the junctureless backloop of times trepan”. This occurs throughout all of these stories. It is like the characters are very natural, they know the environment, the have the skills to hunt, they work hard, and they love each other. But these ideas are contrasted by his writing style and complexity and really blend nicely to create very good pieces of literature. It was just one thing that caught my eye in reading these pieces and I am very envious of this skill he possesses.
By reading closely and paying attention to details, I was able to get so much more out of this story than I did from the first reading. In short, this assignment has greatly deepened my understanding and appreciation of the more complex and subtle techniques Faulkner used to communicated his ideas in the story.
Brooks, Cleanth. "William Faulkner: Visions of Good and Evil." Faulkner, New Perspectives. Ed. Richard H. Brodhead. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey : Prentice-Hall, 1983.