I hope everyone has a healthy, happy summer. It’s been great working with you: I really enjoyed our weekly chats and learned a lot from them.

As promised, I wanted to share some thoughts on the end of GDM, since we didn’t get to discuss the last 1/3 of the text, more or less. It’s 30 mins or so and of course no obligation to watch:

I also wanted to address an interesting question that came up over drinks after our last meeting. For those who are not utterly sick of Yoknapatawpha Co., where to go from here? Here are some thoughts:

1. First and foremost, for those who have not read As I Lay Dying, that’s the text from the generally-acknowledged skinny canon of masterpieces that we didn’t cover. The narrative covers the poor-white subsistence farming Bundren family, it is organized around 59 chapters narrated by 15 different characters in the first person, and the reading experience is sort of like tuning an old AM radio across a bandwidth containing the inner though processes of folks who live lives far removed from the homogenizing forces of modernity. It’s a trip. In many ways the most Joycean of Faulkner’s works, the plot carries us on a harrowing mock-Ulysses-esque journey from the hill country to Jefferson, ostensibly to honor the dead matriarch’s wish to be buried there, with family. But, in a manner by turns repellent and hilarious, we gradually realize that each of the Bundrens has secret, selfish motives to undergo the journey…
2. After having explored the whiter and poorer hill country topos of the Bundren family, you might take on the “Snopes Trilogy” (The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion), the postwar chronicle of the Snopes family, who allegorically point to the eclipse of plantocratic hegemony in the county and the rise of the kind of modern, capitalist ruthlessness that Faulkner began to explore with Jason but which reaches its final form in the figure of Flem Snopes. These novels are much less experimental in form than the material we read, and they occasionally devolve into unintentional self-parody, like a lot of Faulkner’s later work, but a) we see the remarkable gift for emplotment and deferral that one also finds in the best films of the era; and b) we find harbingers of our own moment, rife as it is with confidence schemes and the poisoning of all manner of public wells.
3. Alternatively, you might survey the Collected Fiction volume to read some short fiction that adds more detail to the prehistory of Ikkemotubbe and the Native presence in the county: “Red Leaves” is a good place to start. While you’re at it, “Barn Burning” is a good port of entry to the Snopes saga.
4. Other pathways include: a) a look at Faulkner’s fascination with modernity via Pylon, which concerns early aviation, among other topics, and Sanctuary, which plays with the genre of noir fiction (while exceeding it in typical Faulkner fashion); b) a deeper dive into the Sartoris saga via Sartoris (or the “director’s cut” of sorts, Flags in the Dust, a longer volume that was edited into Sartoris at the publisher’s demand); c) a return to the character of Lucas Beauchamp in Intruder in the Dust, a late novel within Faulkner’s career.

Ok: the class isn’t over. It isn’t even class. Have a great summer!

I am still trying to decide the direction I want to take for my final project. The two directions I have been considering was an elongated Yonkapedia of Name/Naming in Faulkner’s LIA Since I feel my most confident with LIA which is what I am nearly leaning towards. As our professor suggested I could also dive into the confusion of names with Lucas/Joe, the unnaming of Lena’s baby and Joe’s grandmother misnaming the baby Joe–as well as the name Byron Bunch. Another helpful suggestion was to talk about Benjy, original The other route I wanted to take upon, but I am struggling with resources which is holding me back from committing to it are the terms of “knowing” and “memory.” Below I will provide resources I have found for both directions and I’ll choose whichever I feel the most confident about. My research methods for naming had just been putting in the names of the character’s and analyzing their character makeup in connection to their names. For “knowing” and “memory” I have been putting just that. My main research database has been through the Hunter College Online Library. 

Resources I have for Name/Naming: 

Kirk, Robert W. “Faulkner’s Lena Grove.” The Georgia Review, vol. 21, no. 1, 1967, pp. 57–64. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41396329. 

This source dives into Lena’s character in Light in August. I view Lena’s character as someone who is constantly on the go. It could be due to her upbringing and/or her circumstances, but I feel that there could be a strategic way of connecting the imagery of her constantly on the go to her last name Grove (small group of trees… her walking barefoot). It can be a reach, but certainly something I will consider. 

Robinson, Owen. “‘Liable to Be Anything’: The Creation of Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s ‘Light in August.’” Journal of American Studies, vol. 37, no. 1, 2003, pp. 119–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27557257.

In this text, Robinson explains “to consider the identity of Joe Christmas, therefore, is to engage with a network of voices each trying to ‘write’ him, and each consciously and unconsciously ‘reading’ him simultaneously, receiving the influence of other elements of his dialogic presence” (121). I would use this text to connect the creation of Joe’s character to his name, and explain how his name was purposeful on Faulkner’s end. 

SHERAZI, MELANIE MASTERTON. “‘Playing It Out Like a Play’: Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden’s Erotic Masquerade in William Faulkner’s Light in August.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, 2014, pp. 483–506. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26467988. 

This text heavily analyzes the characters Joe Christmas and Joana Burden. Interestingly enough, her last name being “burden” could also be of use to my paper because it can connect to how Joe may have viewed her. 

Pryse, Marjorie. “Textual Duration against Chronological Time: Graphing Memory in Faulkner’s Benjy Section.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 2009, pp. 15–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24908366.

This article talks about the way Benjy surges through time and how, as we all know, his name was supposed to be Maury but was changed to Benjamin after his intellectual disability was discovered. I feel as thoough there is a lot I can talk about there and how the lack of name/identity that Benjy possesses (Maury/Benjamin/Benjy)–that inconsistency plays as a parallel to his non chronological perception of time. 

 Kinney, Arthur F. Critical Essays on William Faulkner : the Compson Family. G.K. Hall, 1982.

** Working on getting access, but I feel like it could be helpful primary source to dives into the names/idenities that make up the Compson Family. 

Resources I have for Knowing & Memory: 

Schreiber, Evelyn Jaffe. “‘Memory Believes Before Knowing Remembers’: The Insistence of the Past and Lacan’s Unconscious Desire in ‘Light in August.’” Faulkner Journal, vol. 20, no. 1/2, 2004, pp. 71–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24908253. Accessed 3 May 2023.

This article would work well with the terms “knowing” especially because it discusses the acknowledgement of violence within the community in LIA. When I wanted to talk about “knowing,” knowing was about the reality that surrounds the characters in the novel. This text would support my claim as it does not sugar coat the reality of violence that occurs in LIA. 

Anca Peiu. “‘MEMORY BELIEVES BEFORE KNOWING REMEMBERS’: EVANESCENCE AND /OR ENDURANCE IN WILLIAM FAULKNER.” University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series, vol. XI/2009, no. 2, 2022.

Peiu thoroughly discusses the term “memory” in this essay and explains that it is not so much about time but about vision, “a backward vision plus a necessary anticipation” (62). This would be a perfect source for this topic because it is exactly what I was thinking about the role of memory in LIA. Memories are never concrete–a group of people could experience the same things at the same time but each person could remember that moment differently. Memories are different from “knowing,” because “knowing” is a reality versus memories are not always one. Hence, “memory believes before knowing remembers,” a memory has more capibility to believe something else because it does not factor in the reality of the situation everytim

This annotated bibliography is an expansion of the preliminary sources I had gathered for my project proposal. I started the process by browsing through Zotero library for relevant books and journal articles related to Faulkner and ecology. Then, I used Hunter OneSearch to look for these sources and find other sources that take an ecocritical approach to Faulkner’s works. I have been browsing through databases such as Proquest Ebook Central and JSTOR to find articles and books related to Faulkner, ecology, and wood. Naturally, my keywords have been “Faulkner,” “ecology,” and “wood” across these databases, and I have also been searching for “wood” and “woods” in several ebooks. Although I have found some insightful and useful material that fits the scope of my research topic, I plan to expand my research and browse through other databases and resources to find additional primary and secondary sources that focus closely on Faulkner’s treatment of wood.

Primary Sources

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. Vintage, 1990.
In this novel, wood is a prominent motif that is consistently used to describe the Sutpen house. It is also described as an organic material akin to human flesh, alluding to notions of transcorporeality and speaking to experiences of wilderness, labor, deforestation, and the connections between human and nonhuman nature. This source is relevant because it underscores the function of wood as a symbol of experiential knowledge and ecological embeddedness.

Faulkner, William. Light in August. Vintage, 1990.
In this novel, wood imagery emerges in two primary ways: through “chopping” and “entering”. Characters are chopping wood, using products made of wood, and oftentimes, physically entering in and out of the woods. This source highlights the connections between wood-labor-production, and the relationship between characters like Joe Christmas and the woods, offering room to explore the function of wood imagery as a signifier of capitalism, race, modernization, and the natural world.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage, 1990.
In this novel, wood imagery is associated with the unknown realms of the environment as well as the human mind—memory, emotion, and knowledge. In particular, there are scenes in which wood imagery is associated with a type of black feminine knowledge, and by extension, white appropriation of that knowledge. This source elucidates how wood is associated with blackness, excess, and gender and sexuality in the white imagination and subconscious mind.

Faulkner, William. Go Down Moses. Vintage, 1990.
In this novel, the “big woods” or forest is an important place of conflict and action, subjected to destruction, exploitation, and environmental abuse. This source is relevant because it highlights the problematic (i.e., hostile yet interdependent) relationship between humans and the natural world.

Secondary Sources

Parrish, Susan Scott. “Faulkner and the Outer Weather of 1927.” American Literary History, vol. 24, no. 1, 2012, pp. 34–58. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41329627. Accessed 14 Apr. 2023.
This journal article suggests that a glimpse into anthropogenic activities such as deforestation in the South offers insight into how Faulkner saw “catastrophic environmental experiences, and its knowledge, to shift across the color line” (45). This source offers a substantive reading of environmental experiences in the novel, and examines how the ecological entanglement between characters and nonhuman nature provides insight into anxieties about whiteness, blackness, and ontological experience in the novel.

Sivils, Matthew Wynn. “Faulkner’s Ecological Disturbances.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 3–4, 2006, pp. 489–502. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26467020. Accessed 18 Apr. 2023.
This journal article suggests that ecological disturbances such as deforestation illustrate “a strong connection between environmental abuse and human suffering—especially in terms of racial oppression” (489). This source connects environmental damage in the land of the South to the plight of African Americans, and thus draws a parallel between anthropogenic and white supremacist systems of exploitation and oppression.

Watson, Jay. William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity. Oxford UP, 2019.
In the second chapter of this book, Watson traces the modernization of timber and lumber industries in the US South in relation to the modern economy of wood in Light in August, examining the production, distribution, circulation, and destruction of furniture in the novel. This source highlights how this economic representation of wood both reinforces and subverts “Faulkner’s anatomy of Jim Crow’s psychological and social order” (30).

Additional Sources:

Faulkner and the Ecology of the South, edited by Joseph R. Urgo, and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=746917.

Faulkner and the Natural World, edited by Donald M. Kartiganer, and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 1999. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3039920.

Matthews, John T. William Faulkner : Seeing Through the South, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=428098.

Saikku, Mikko. “Faulkner and the ‘Doomed Wilderness’ of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 3, 2005, pp. 529–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26476607.

I found my sources using Hunter’s online library system. I have several digital sources, and also checked out several printed books. As I am still honing my topic, I searched for a variety of keywords including Faulkner and “dirt” “abjection” “contamination” and “fluidity,” among others, and found sources recommended by Prof. Allred. I will likely add more to this list, and cut some of the below as needed!

My original final project proposal was a Yoknapatawpha entry on Fluidity & Contamination. Prof. Allred noted that this could branch into two different directions: abjection or contamination/dirt/desire.  For now, I have decided to lean into the latter of the two, though I have included sources regarding abjection. Purity is a topic that comes up often in the lives of Faulkner’s characters, and many of the stories’ plots center on the ways this purity is dirtied. The mythical purity of the south, women’s virginity, and the white race are all presented in Yoknapatawpha and subsequently “contaminated,” causing abjection and fear on the part of those who subscribe to, however outright or subconsciously, the ideals of white supremacy, and ultimately revealing fluidity as the natural state of things. 

Theweleit, Klaus. Male Fantasies. University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

In his book, Theweleit seeks to explain his theory on the fascist man’s need for violence, studying Pre-WWII German soldiers. Much of the book is spent describing the perceived faults of others, particularly women. These faults lay mostly in literal and figurative dirt, mud, mire, contamination, and pollution in women’s bodies and actions. According to Theweliet, the fascist man’s hatred for women can be found in their discomfort with fluidity, things that break up an uncomplicated, easy to digest binary, and threaten the boundary of their own being: what is me and what is other.  Menstruation and other feminine fluids are of the most apartment threats within this framework. 

Fowler, Doreen., and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner and Race. University Press of Mississippi, 1987.

This collection of essays on race within Faulkner’s work spans many topics. I plan to focus on James A Snead’s essay “Light in August and the Rhetorics of Racial Division.” Snead focuses on Joe Christmas’s lack of “signification” and his refusal on being labeled as white or black. Snead uses the phrase “merging” to describe Joe and other characters’ fluidity, and a blending that so many of Faulkner’s and Joe’s contemporaries would view as impure. 

Fowler, Doreen., and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner and Women. University Press of Mississippi, 1986.

In another collection of essays, the authors compile essays that investigate Faulkner’s portrayal of women. While I am still working through all of the essays, I plan to focus on Fowler’s own “Joe Christmas and ‘Womanshenegro,’ which discusses Joe’s hatred of women as a symptom of the “fear and rejection” of the “qualities in his own nature that ally him with women and blacks.” I plan to explore how her ideas connect to abjection and vomit, and his disgust with his own racial and gender contamination. 

Fowler, Doreen., and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner and the Craft of Fiction. University Press of Mississippi, 1989.

(ok, yes, I am clearly a fan of these anthologizers and got stuck in one aisle of the Cooperman stacks!) There’s so much to look at in many of the pieces in this book! However, I plan to lean into Philip Weinstein’s “ ‘Thinking I Was I Was Not Who Was Not Was Not Who’: The Vertigo of Faulknerian Identity.” This essay investigates the relationship between the self and society, where the society can “penetrate” oneselves selfhood and end in tragedy. 

Matthews, John T. William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South. 1. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009

I plan to use Matthews as a launching point to discuss Caddy’s dirty drawers, but will likely draw on several chapters to discuss sexuality and race. If the word count allows, I may also end the project with some thoughts on twilight as the ultimate symbol of fluidity, day mixing into night, hybridity, transition, etc. 

Kristeva, Julia, and John Lechte. “Approaching Abjection.” Oxford Literary Review, vol. 5, no. 1/2, 1982, pp. 125–49. 

Kriseva’s first section of the Powers of Horror (I still cannot find the entire book in English!) 

Bové, C. M. . [Review of Powers of Horror. An Essay on Abjection, by J. Kristeva & L. S. Roudiez]. Discourse, 11(1), 1988, pp.151–156. 

Of all the reviews I have looked at, this seems to be the most helpful in constructing a definition of abstraction, especially in how it may relate to Faulkner’s writing. 

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger : an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge, 2003.

An exploration of dirt, purity, and contamination that I plan to apply to all of the novels I discuss. 

Yaeger, Patricia. Dirt and Desire Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing, 1930-1990. University of Chicago Press, 2000

Yaeger discusses the concept of dirt in Southern Women’s Writing. Still reading this one, but one quote stood out to me: “[The] terror of bodily contamination through contact with a racial ‘ other.’”

Vickroy, Laurie. Reading Trauma Narratives : the Contemporary Novel & the Psychology of Oppression. University of Virginia Press, 2015.

The third chapter of the book is titled “Obsessions and Possessions in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!” She discusses Sutpen’s original scene of trauma (being told to go to the back of the house) as a threat to his power and whiteness and as a catalyst for him to prevent contamination in his “pure” bloodline. 

Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. Reaktion, 2000.

In Chromophobia, Bachelor asserts that the chromophobic impulse – a fear of corruption or contamination through color – lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge color, either by making it “the property of some “foreign body” – the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological – or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic.” The book starts as an explanation of literal whiteness and moves into territories that I think could help to explain Joe Christmas. One standout quote from the book: 

“This space [the classical body and whiteness] was clearly a model for how a body ought to be: enclosed, contained, sealed. The ideal body: without flesh of any kind, old or young, beautiful or battered, scented or smelly; without movement, external or internal; without appetites. (That is why the kitchen was such a disturbing place – but not nearly as disturbing as the toilet.) But perhaps it was more perverse than that; perhaps this was a model of what the body should be like from within. Not a place of fluids, organs, muscles, tendons and bones all in a constant, precarious and living tension with each other, but a vacant, hollow, whited chamber, scraped clean, cleared of any evidence of the grotesque embarrassments of an actual life. No smells, no noises, no colour; no changing from one state to another and the uncertainty that comes with it; no exchanges with the outside world and the doubt and the dirt that goes with that; no eating, no drinking, no pissing, no shitting, no sucking, no fucking, no nothing. It won’t go away. Whiteness always returns. Whiteness is woven into the fabric of Culture. The Bible, again: ‘Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.’”

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. 1st ed., New York, Vintage Books, 1990.

Shreve’s last paragraph echoes the white supremacist voice that fears the fluidity and perceived contamination of miscegenation. I may also explore the racial ambiguity of Bon, and the “dirtiness” of Sutpen’s sexuality. 

Faulkner, William. Light in August: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1985. 

Joe Christmas encompasses all that is fluid and mixed, and may be a primary focus of my final project. More importantly, within the problematic framework of the South of his time, with which he seems to internally battle, his whiteness is contaminated by the possibility of blackness. Ironically, even his initial presentation is bound up with that which is mixed or soiled.  He can’t escape the mixing: his clothes upon introduction are both sharp and soiled, formal yet dirty. I may also explore how the town and Christmas view Joanna Burden’s sexuality, namely with phrases like sewer and gutter.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1984. 

Contamination comes up most poignantly when Caddy drawers are literally dirtied. The narrative, following this pivotal moment, unfolds on a deeper level around incest as contamination, and incest as a venue to save one from contamination. 

Here’s a schematic of the genealogy that flows from Quintus Lucius Carrothers McCaslin, the site of the violent and destructive “boundless conceiving” whose aftermath consumes Go Down, Moses.

No disrespect to Leo’s awesome map! This one is useful for its representation of race, but I do have some questions about it reifies, in effect the text’s own account of the pure blackness of any characters who are not discovered to be mixed. One might assume that many of the characters would have been mixed to some degree, given what we know about the sexual economy of this society, and the diagram papers over that sociological fact. It comes from Edmond Volpe’s A Reader’s Guide to Faulkner :

volpe-McCaslintree

Proposed Yoknapedia Entry: “Democracy”

I have noticed a chain of seemingly democratic decisions made by the characters in The Unvanquished. This includes John Sartoris’ election to military commander and his subsequent demotion, the local election which he hijacks in order to cut off the spread of Northern influence, and the support of Bayard killing Mr. Redmond in a duel to avenge him. John Sartoris is often involved in these instances of “democracy” and with John’s function as representative of traditional Southern ideals and values, along with the often skewed and sensationalized decisions that result from said instances, shows that “democracy” in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County is tailored to fit these traditional Southern ideals, and so not necessarily representative of the rule of the people. It is the ones with power who champion this form of democracy, as it fits the ideals and values that they are proponents of. This form of democracy works to keep the traditions and accommodate those in power. 

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. New York, Vintage International, 1991.

The Unvanquished will be the primary source for this entry, as I will discuss how it portrays a unique version of democracy which is based in traditional Southern ideals and only seems to benefit those who champion those Southern ideals the most. I will analyze the hints that Bayard gives to the earlier event of John’s election to commander and his subsequent demotion, both a result of a democratic process. I will mainly focus on the hijacking of the election by John and that version of the democratic process which occurred as the main example of “democracy.” I will also consider the interaction of George Wyatt and Bayard as he prepared to face Mr. Redmond, as George represents the old Southern consensus of how that situation should be handled. These three are instances of the “democracy” of Yoknapatawpha and its adherence to old traditions. 

Goldman, Arnold. “Faulkner’s Images of the Past: From ‘Sartoris’ to ‘The Unvanquished.’” The Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 8, 1978, pp. 109–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3506768. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Goldman analyzes several of Faulkner’s works, some of which we have read in this course, to trace the “inhibition of time, change, and process” (123) present in them. He starts with an analysis of Sartoris which I have picked up from the library but have yet to read, and which may very well be useful to this entry. Much of the context of what Goldman details is lost on me until then, so I plan to revisit that when I have a better understanding of the text. His section on The Unvanquished identifies the ‘descent’ of John much like Haynie does, and acknowledges the popular opinion of the older characters that Bayard should have taken revenge and shot Redmond. I think the above quote will function well as a sort of definition for democracy in my entry, as it effectively sums up the motivations of those who perpetuate that particular version of it in Yoknapatawpha. 

Haynie, Shirley M. “THEMATIC CODE VARIATIONS IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S ‘THE UNVANQUISHED.’” Interpretations, vol. 16, no. 1, 1985, pp. 116–23. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43797853. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Haynie identifies “variations on the perpetuation, destruction, or revision of some type of code” (116) in The Unvanquished, and characterizes it as a “conflict between tradition and anti tradition… between law and expediency” (116). She argues that the characters like Colonel Sartoris, Granny, Drusilla, and Ab Snopes adhere to or break the code of Southern tradition and meet their demise because of it. Bayard is excluded from this group because he is cognizant enough to act in ways that allows him to both adhere to or break the code where necessary, and still benefit from it. He is exempt because of his flexibility. Haynie’s analysis of Colonel Sartoris, while brief, offers a valuable analysis of his strict adherence to southern chivalric ideals during the war which presented him as a hero during the war, and as a “near-villain” (118) during reconstruction. I plan to relate this analysis with his involvement in “democracy” as while the version of it that he promotes during the war is in service of the Southern cause, and thus heroic in the eyes of the people, the version of it he promotes during Reconstruction is considerably more violent, contributes to a dysfunctional cycle and hinders progress. I also value her analysis of Bayard’s interaction with George Wyatt, as George represents the old southern values and John’s form of democracy, and so his disposition provides an example of the attitudes and persistence of that form. 

Pryse, Marjorie. “Miniaturizing Yoknapatawpha: ‘The Unvanquished’ as Faulkner’s Theory of Realism.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 3, 1980, pp. 343–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26475035. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Pryse argues that in The Unvanquished, Faulkner begins the novel with a miniaturized focus of events that reflects Bayard’s own perspective of events as they happen around him. Bayard’s point of view is so narrow because of his age and lack of experience, and so the novel reflects this with its portrayal of events. As Bayard grows, Faulkner proceeds to magnify the focus until it more closely resembles realism, as by that point the characters have better awareness of the world. I value her analysis of “Skirmish at Sartoris” and her idea of Faulkner’s miniaturization of Southern ideals into the image of the ballot box. I plan to incorporate her analysis of it, and use it to show that the receptacle of democracy, which contents are unknown to the reader, is taken by John and his men in order to impose their ideals on it, as they use it as a source of legitimization of the election, but ultimately assign their own reality to it, as it is said that its contents all contained votes of “no” when that is likely untrue. The ballot box is the miniaturizing of Southern ideals in that moment as well as a symbol of democracy. 

Sharpe, Peter. “Bonds That Shackle: Memory, Violence, and Freedom in ‘The Unvanquished.’” Faulkner Journal, vol. 20, no. 1/2, 2004, pp. 85–110. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24908254. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Sharpe argues that in The Unvanquished Bayard creates a new Southern consciousness in his refusal to avenge his father in the traditional way that challenges and ultimately dispels the rigidity of the heritage that came before him. I am fond of his analysis of the interaction between Bayard and George Wyatt, who I believe represents the old Southern ideals of “democracy” and am intrigued by his identification of Wyatt and John’s old unit as a “Greek ‘chorus’” (85) which I think perfectly describes just how this version of democracy functions, as a group of few people who speak collectively and have significance to the ‘play’ of events that occur. 

Yonke, Jean Mullin. “Faulkner’s Civil War Women.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, 1990, pp. 39–62. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24907680. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Yonke’s section on “Lost Cause Mythology” identifies a pattern of aggrandizement perpetuated by Southern writers regarding the Civil War. She notes the particular focus on the Cavalry officer as the knight-like hero, which brings to mind how young Bayard views his father. Particularly relevant to The Unvanquished is her point that “Post War poverty and Reconstruction experience encouraged Southerners to look backward and create a glorious past in both the antebellum and the war years; within two generations the grim realities of war had been transformed into a romantic myth of the lost cause” (41). Her analysis of this mythology is useful in identifying a mindset that motivated John Sartoris and the others in their implementation of their version of democracy. Yonke states that “For Southerners the Civil War was the event that destroyed antebellum society and its virtues” (42). This helps better establish a reason for which such a form of democracy was practiced, and explains the violent rejection of the McCaslin’s, as they were seen as the destruction of that traditional society and those traditional values, thus requiring the form of democracy in which they often implemented to preserve them. 

I found these sources through Hunter’s online library system, using the keywords “Faulkner” and “sexuality,” and/or “queer,” and via suggestions from Prof. Allred after my proposal. I also used the Zotero library for “Coming Out through History’s Hidden Love Letters in Absalom, Absalom!” I also am choosing to limit my research around Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August for the purpose of keeping my analysis based on close readings rather than ambiguous comparisons. As per my paper pitch, my questions remain:

-To what extent does queer language and identity speak in conversation with southern morality and suppression in Faulkner’s work? 

-How often is erotica entangled within non conforming identities? 

-Was Faulkner suggesting something about queerness, desire, and humanity through his characters and their sexuality?

Foucault, M. (1990). The History of Sexuality, volume 1: An introduction. Vintage Books. 

Foucault’s History of Sexuality will serve as my framework to plot and point at the nature of Faulkner’s restrictive erotic’s, in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Majorly, it will be my key to understanding the “regime of power-knowledge-pleasure” that sustains power systems and propagations of knowledge. Furthermore, Foucault speaks on how an individual is defined by how he or she fits into a doctrine of sexuality (such as that seen in various religions, economic systems, family moral). This will guide me in uncovering one of my primary questions, How often is erotica entangled within non conforming identities? 

Sensibar, J. L. (2010). Faulkner and Love: The women who shaped his art. Yale University Press. 

Sensibar provides bibliographical assertions on Faulkner’s life and his varying modes of loving throughout. Most importantly, she highlights both how Faulkner’s women often subject culture norms, in addition to bringing forth the erotic suppression Faulkner himself may have felt in both heterosexual and homosexual relations. This, too, will serve as important framework to expose the psychological / emotional landscape of the writer, and thus, the psychological and emotional landscapes of his characters and their language surrounding erotic’s. 

Jones, Norman W. “Coming Out through History’s Hidden Love Letters in Absalom, Absalom!” American Literature, vol. 76 no. 2, 2004, p. 339-366. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/169224. 

This source does a particularly good job of exposing the homosexual desire (and tragedy) of Quentin and Shreve, Henry and Bon, and, more broadly, of closeted southern gentleman and gentlewoman. Jones’ reading of the boys in their erotic retelling of Henry and Bon speaks greatly to the homosexual repression suggested in Faulkner and Love and the systems of power which would deny the sexuality to be enacted on as described in Foucault’s The History of Sexuality. 

Sherazi. (2014). “Playing It Out Like a Play”: Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden’s Erotic Masquerade in William Faulkner’s Light in August. The Mississippi Quarterly, 67(3), 483–506. https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2014.0007

Sherazi delves into the complex racial and gendered erotics which Joanna Burden and Joe Christmas perform throughout the three years of their co-residency on her property. Sherazi, most importantly, detangles the “racialized and gendered structures of domination,” exposing the systems of power which denounce the two characters’ affairs as something between racial and sexual theory. This source speaks most directly to the heterosexual fear and shame tied to Faulkner’s writing, and also depicts a mirror to the homosexual shame noted in other sources.

Deborah E. McDowell. (2010). Must Have Been Love: Sexualities’ Attachments in Faulkner. In Faulkner’s Sexualities (p. 94–). University Press of Mississippi.

McDowell creates an important connection to the discussion of sexuality and “the sordid details and the brutal history of slavery and segregation at the heart of his entire Southern cycle— concubinage, incest, and tangled interracial genealogies” which permeate through much of Faulkner’s depictions of love and trauma. This source will speak more broadly to the relationship between sexuality and Faulkner’s “search for a language of love” with a backdrop of mass violence enacted through a country on the bounds of identity. 

(Primary Source) Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! : the Corrected Text. Vintage international edition., Vintage International / Vintage Books, 1990.

Of Faulkner’s books I am choosing to focus on, Absalom, Absalom! is of perhaps greatest importance. While much of the Eros is within the unsaid, there is plenty here to analyze—from Bon to Henry, Shreve to Quentin, Rosa to Clytie, and so forth. 

(Primary Source) Faulkner, William. Light in August : the Corrected Text. Vintage international edition., Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1990.

Light in August is second most important in my argument surrounding sexuality. I am looking to analyze Joanna Burden and Joe Christmas’ relationship, alongside Joe’s own erotic upbringing (toothpaste) and the relationship between sexuality and race and power.

My long Yoknapedia entry will use the keywords “adultery” and “infidelity” (these terms are near-synonymous, so I will use them both in my entry, even though they are not fully interchangeable – the former refers to extramarital affairs, and the latter refers to cheating in any sort of relationship, marital or not) to examine the role this sexual deviance plays in the downfalls of patriarchal figureheads and the destructions of their families. Often in the books we have read this semester, the downfall of the patriarch happens after an infidelity has challenged their masculinity, whiteness, and/or moral authority. Because there is not a lot of research on this topic in Faulkner specifically, my sources will largely be peripherally related texts that I will tie to this topic through the questions of gender, miscegenation, incest, queerness, virginity, and the changing moral values of the post-Civil War South that arise from the discussion of infidelity and adultery, and these deviances’ roles in the downfalls of the patriarchs.

Focusing on the Margins: “Light in August” and Social Change, Abdul-Razzak Al-Barhow, The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 2 no. 2 p. 52-72, 2010

This article discusses the town’s perception of Hightower after his wife’s death, emphasizing that her death is “blamed on Hightower’s assumed relationship to his black female cook” (55). Hightower’s case is fascinating, as the town blames his white wife’s adultery on his presumed interracial adultery. The townspeople view the latter as something far more immoral, and this perception is the main cause of his fall from prominence in Jefferson.

“Light in August”: The Calvinism of William Faulkner, Alwyn Berland, Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 8 no. 2, p. 159-170, 1962

In this text, Berland discusses Catholic morals and the ways in which they inform the sexual politics of LIA, noting that Joe Christmas’s “black blood” only becomes important when sex is important, too. This analysis provides a useful window into the particular role that race and miscegenation play in the chain reactions to the infidelities of LIA, GDM, and AA!.

“Absalom, Absalom!” and the Snopes Trilogy: Southern Patriarchy in Revision, Corinne Dale, The Mississippi Quarterly vol. 45 no. 3, p. 323-337, 1992

This article discusses Sutpen (and Snopes, but my entry won’t be covering him, since we did not read the Snopes trilogy this semester) as a capitalist patriarch whose victims are his own family members. It goes into detail on Sutpen’s role in the domestic sphere, arguing that his repudiation of Eulalia corrupts her maternity (at least in Quentin and Shreve’s imaginations), transforming her into a cold woman hellbent on vengeance.

Games of Property: Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Thadious M. Davis, 2003

This book relates the conflicts of Go Down, Moses to certain Supreme Court cases, including the 1859 case Alfred, a Slave v. State in which Alfred, a man enslaved on a Mississippi plantation, killed an overseer for raping Alfred’s wife, Charlotte. Omitting any arguments of sexual assault, the Court ruled that “adultery with a slave wife is no defense to a charge of murder” (118). It is notable that Charlotte’s assault was legally classified as adultery because of her race and enslavement status. This source will provide useful historical context for the perceptions of adultery in Go Down, Moses as well of the other novels in this entry.

PRIMARY SOURCE: Light in August, William Faulkner, 1932

Jefferson’s perceptions of Gail Hightower in the wake of his wife’s affair and subsequent death will be the heart of my analysis of infidelity and adultery in this book. That said, I will also touch on the perceptions of Joe Christmas, whose ambiguous racial background puts his sexual affairs under a specific, deadly scrutiny.

PRIMARY SOURCE: Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner, 1936

For this book, I will discuss the ways in which Sutpen’s many affairs and abandonments bastardize (so to speak) the traditional family values that had long upheld the Southern moral code. I will also discuss the Henry-Judith-Charles Bon love triangle, and Bon’s dubious claim that his engagement to Judith is not adultery because his first wife is not white.

PRIMARY SOURCE: Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner, 1941

My ideas for GDM will become more fully-baked as we read the rest of the text, but the centrality of family and the conflicts of “The Fire and the Hearth” will certainly provide rich fodder for this discussion.

The Family-Centered Nature of Faulkner’s World, Arthur F. Kinney, College Literature vol. 16 no. 1, p. 83-102, 1989

Focusing particularly on Sutpen, Kinney discusses the sociological centrality of the family in American life, and the specific emphasis on these values in the South, and the ways in which sexual infidelities challenge the dyadic nuclear model. The author uses Sutpen as a case study of a patriarch who wanted a son and got too many (by way of adultery and abandonment), and discusses the “long and involved story of the McCaslin-Edmonds-Beauchamp family” (97) as a “sequel” of sorts to Sutpen’s story.

Adultery in the United States: Close Encounters of the Sixth (or Seventh) Kind, Edited by Philip E. Lampe, 1987

A review of this sociology book says that one chapter examines the role of adultery in American literature, paying particular attention to Southern novelists, including Faulkner specifically. This book has been hard to find online, but I got the last used copy of it on Amazon and should have it by next week. I’m hoping this chapter will explicitly relate to the infidelities in the books we have covered this semester – but if not, I’m confident it will nonetheless provide useful information.

“Other Souths”: Expressions of Gay Identity in Absalom, Absalom!, Matthew R. Vaughn, The Mississippi Quarterly vol. 60 no. 3, p. 519-528, 2007

Vaughn’s text examines the nuances of the Henry-Judith-Bon love triangle in AA!. It would be remiss to discuss the infidelities of AA! without analyzing this love triangle and the issues of incest, miscegenation, queer identity, and virginity that the dynamics between these three characters bring to light.

New Essays on Go Down, Moses, Edited by Linda Wagner-Martin, 1996

This book (specifically the introduction, though I am trying to get my hands on a hard copy so that I can look through all of the essays) discusses the centrality of responsibility in sexual affairs and family life, citing “Edmonds’ self-gratifying affair with an unnamed mulatto, who is one of his own cousins” (6) and arguing that he abandons his lover and their child in order to stay in the good graces of the white male community. Responsibility is certainly a key issue in the adulteries of these books, and this analysis ties that issue to the racial and patriarchal dynamics that shape the characters’ choices.

In researching Faulker’s treatment of food throughout his fictional universe, I used the keywords “food,” “eating,” and “kinship,” as I searched through Hunter College Library online, as well as as JSTOR, and of course the Zotero library. My research has helped me zero in on the meat of the question I am asking: how do the acts of consuming and/or rejecting food or nonfood define or reject a given kinship throughout Faulkner’s universe? I am primarily interested here in tracing and analyzing characters’ behavior regarding food and eating, as opposed to the digestive figurative language that Faulkner often uses, which could just as well be the focus of an essay of Faulkner’s treatment of food, but would lend itself perhaps less to the psychoanalytic-meets-sociological analytical lens I intend to use. I plan to limit my analysis to the four Faulkner texts in the bibliography below.

– Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text. Vintage international ed. New York, Vintage Books, 1990. In this text, Sutpen is presented as an outsider determined to attain or claim his rightful status of whiteness in Jefferson. I will examine his interactions with food and eating as embodiments of his navigation of the racial hierarchy to his socioeconomic gain. Some key instances to look at here include his hunting for food and other unconventional-to-Jefferson means of feeding himself and his “team” of foreign employees and enslaved people, and his “fight club,” or ritualistic spectacle he orchestrates in which he forces those he’s enslaved to fight one another, and sometimes to fight him too, in front of a large crowd. This spectacle, I will argue, serves to threaten the enslaved with their consumable status by boldly displaying/ embodying/ perpetuating the comparative in-consumability of whiteness. (I will also keep in mind the coming-of-age/ loss-of-innocence language often used to describe Sutpen’s developing awareness of racial hierarchy. I wonder if there is a connection here to Sutpen’s eating.)

– Faulkner William. Go Down, Moses. Vintage international ed. New York, Vintage Books, 1994. Focusing on “The Fire and the Hearth,” I will use Clough’s argument as a starting point to analyze characters’ compliance towards and subversion (or resistance as Clough calls it) of racial hierarchy through eating and domesticity. Borrowing Clough’s metonymic linking of food and its encompassing domestic sphere, I will look at the anxieties of the private domestic sphere as racial anxieties, paying particular attention to burgeoning racial awareness of brothers Roth and Henry, as well as the racial awareness and resistance to hierarchy exhibited by or embodied in Lucas, even as he accepts the possibility of his lynching (Clough, 404). ( I will also keep in mind the coming-of-age/ loss-of-innocence language used to describe the brothers growing up, to search for any relevant patterns or intersections with the coming of age/ language of innocence used to describe Sutpen in AA.)

– Faulkner William. Light in August : The Corrected Text. Vintage international ed. New York, Vintage Books, 1990. As Hasratian points out, Light in August presents two characters lacking kinship. Joe Christmas’s is one of rejection, and Lena Grove’s is one of acceptance or integration. I will study Joe Christmas’s subversive relationship to food and eating, leading up to his lynching, by which he is transformed from the subject to the object of eating in the narrative, finally becoming consumable to the white townspeople who hunt and kill him in final act of kinship, defining the white townspeople’s kinship by his murder and consumability. I will also examine Lena Grove’s compliant relationship to food, by contrast, building on Hasratian’s readings of Lena’s patterns of consumption as inverses of Joe Christmas’s. 

– Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished: The Corrected Text. 1st Vintage International ed. New York, Vintage Books, 1991. As I argued in my midterm, The Unvanquished presents a kinship between brothers Bayard and Ringo shared over food, based, however, on unequal access to that food. We see this in the brothers’ relationship, as well as “family” mealtimes that include the Sartoris family members, and those enslaved by the Sartoris family. (Not that the distinction is often clear, as Ringo demonstrates.)

– Hasratian, Avak.“The Death of Difference in ‘Light in August.’” Criticism, vol. 49, no. 1, 2007, pp. 55–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23128768. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023. This article provides a key word to my argument, kinship. Hasratian points out that community as defined by kinship is a “central preoccupation” for Faulkner (55). He goes on to argue regarding Light in August that while Joe Christmas rejects difference, Lena, another character lacking kinship, embraces or literally embodies others. We can see the pattern of these inverse behaviors in each character’s treatment of consumption. For example, Christmas’s consumption and vomiting of nonfood, toothpaste– an example of Christmas rejecting human distinction from animal– vs. Lena’s pleasurable consumption of tinned fish, or bread– embraces, embodiments of the ritual of kinship, instances of acceptance of the presence of the “other” who gives her money, or offers her food. While Hasratian focuses on Christmas and Lena as inverse experiences of difference and kinship, I will apply the word kinship, and the anthropological understanding of kinship’s reliance on food, eating as a communal ritual, to instances of characters eating, rejecting, or otherwise interacting with food, not as a way to read Faulkner’s interactions with the philosophical distinctions between human and nonhuman categories, but to read a character’s compliance with and/or subversion against the racial hierarchies embodied in the act of eating as the basis of kinship(s).

– Rosenzweig, Paul J. “Faulkner’s Motif of Food in ‘Light in August.’” American Imago, vol. 37, no. 1, 1980, pp. 93–112. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26303816. Accessed 29 Mar. 2023. Rosenzweig offers in-depth psychoanalytic readings of the appearance of food in Light in August, using terms like “positive” and “healthy” to describe some character’s relationships to food (Lena Grove, for example), while characterizing others’ relationships to food as troubled, and symptomatic of developmental delays in freudian terms (anal, oral, etc.). This is most significant in his discussion of Joe Christmas’s rejection of food and kinship, which he connects to Joe’s earlier oedipal experience in which he vomits toothpaste after witnessing a sexual encounter involving his maternal figure (the dietician.) As it was in my midterm paper, Rosenzweig’s reading will continue to be foundational to my own close readings of food in Light in August. I will rely on Rosenzweig’s framework of classifying a character’s relationship to food as “positive” vs. “negative” to categorize character’s relationships to food in my essay as “compliant” or “subversive.”

– Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. NYU Press, 2012. American studies scholar Tompkins identifies eating as a site of violence in literature, in which the thing being eaten is entirely consumed. With this foundational argument for the inherent political violence of eating in 19th century literature, I can support my psychoanalytic and historically-informed reading of food in Faulkner.

– Clough, Edward. “Violence and the Hearth: Lynching and Resistance in Go Down, Moses.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 3, 2012, pp. 391–412. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26467197. Accessed 2 May 2023. This article highlights the role eating plays in the loss of innocence, the burgeoning awareness of racial hierarchy, of brothers Roth and Henry in “The Fire and the Hearth,” arguing “what Faulkner offers in Go Down, Moses, then, is in fact an intimate analysis of the politics of the Southern home in general, and of the political resistance of African American domesticity in particular” (392).  This article also goes on to discuss the lynching of Joe Christmas in Light in August as an act in which Christmas is “cooked” into a consumable object– a reading which will be crucial to my argument that lynching is the ultimate act of kinship for white men in Faulker’s universe (399). Finally, this article discusses Black resistance to the ultimate, defining white supremacist violence, lynching, in GDM: “Precisely by facing and accepting the possibility—the inevitability, even—of lynching, Lucas is able to assert his manhood, his self-possession, his self-determined place. White Southern rhetoric framed lynching as a defense of white home and hearth; here, in an oddly empowering reversal, it is enlisted instead in the defense of black home and hearth” (404). This nuanced reading of the hearth of the home as the site for political anxiety about and also resistance to racial hierarchy will be foundational for my own close readings of eating, rejecting food, and lynching throughout Faulkner’s universe. 

For my research paper, I’m writing about several of Faulkner’s female characters who appear in The Unvanquished, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August, and how they invert the traditional image of a woman. Faulkner’s women brush up against Romanticism and this image of the South being this pristine mystical place. When it comes to gender, sexuality, marriage, and miscegenation; Faulkner’s women reveal societal ironies and weird juxtapositions about Southern society. The development of characters like Drusilla Hawk, Caddy Compson, and Joanna Burden are indeed products of the ever-changing early  20th century and the cultural and social upheavals at display in this time period. Through an analysis of Faulkner’s life and the women he surrounds himself with, we can chart how Faulkner’s women demystify traditional notions about the South.

Sensibar, Judith L. Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, a Biography. Yale University Press, 2009.

This book by Judith Sensibar offers a great understanding of the three women in his life that helped the writer blossom into the artist he would become. My focus on the book will be mostly aimed at his wife Estelle Oldham and how she influenced several characters in his fictional work. She was a writer in her own right and she worked alongside Faulkner throughout the development of his work. The additional biographical information relating to the early 20th century and the social milieu at the time will also be important when discussing how Faulkner demystifies this period.

Trefzer, Annette, and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner’s Sexualities: Dana Andrews. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

This book by Trefzer offers an interesting discussion on the status of sex and sexuality in Faulkner’s work. The relationship between the cultural and material condition of sex in the early 20th century is also an important question the book poses. In terms of what I’ll be using for my paper, my reading of the chapter All Mixed Up: Female Sexuality and Race will expand upon my knowledge of the interplay between race and sexuality in Faulkner’s work. My analysis of Caddy Compson will especially be reliant on this source. The discussion about virginity and menstruation throughout the chapter will reveal a lot of ironies about southern society when it comes to ideas about purity.

Klancar, Natasa Intihar. “Faulkner’s Southern Belle: Myth or Reality?” Acta Neophilologica, vol. 44, no. 1-2, 2011, pp. 47–57, https://doi.org/10.4312/an.44.1-2.47-57.

Klancar’s article address the traditional image of the Southern Belle in Faulkner’s work and their seemingly fall from innocence after failing Southern societal expectations. The crux of my argument is how Faulkner’s women brush up against these stereotypes, and the ultimate irony is that the women who seemingly fall from grace are more free than their contemporaries.

Clarke, Deborah. “Gender, Race, and Language in Light in August.” American Literature, vol. 61, no. 3, 1989, pp. 398–413, https://doi.org/10.2307/2926827.

This source will further expand my knowledge of the sexual and racial dynamic of Light in August. As Clarke argues the uneasy relationship between the sexes in the book mirror the uneasy relations when it comes to race. I’m using this source in my paper so I can argue about Joanna Burden’s relationship with Joe Christmas and how that relationship mirrored southern politics about miscegenation.

Roberts, Diane. “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s Unvanquished.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 233–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875800030772.

This article addresses the image of the “Confederate Woman” in William Faulkner’s Unvanquished. I will be using this source throughout my analysis of Drusilla Hawk and how she inverts aspects of gender and femininity in her society. She embodies many truly “masculine traits” compared to Bayard Sartoris who is expected by the other men to seek revenge after granny’s death. The irony that Drusilla defends the staunch Southern way of life when’s she biggest nonconforming character in the book, is an irony I will endeavor to highlight in my paper.