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

For my final project I wanted to do a longer Yonkapedia of what I started diving into for the previous one in my midterm. For my midterm, I fixated on name/naming in Faulkner’s Light In August. I focused on Joe’s Christmas’ character development and inconsistency of identity within himself and how practically being ‘unnamed’ contributed to the life that he lived out. I could stay within the lines of my midterm but this time include either providing more depth on Faulkner’s choice of naming and creation of  Joe Christmas’ character and/or include Joe Brown / Lucas Burch into the Yonkapedia. 

I don’t know how I’d expand the Yonkapedia enough where I could reach the guidelines of the Final, but if not I also had in mind doing two medium entries that will equate to the final project requirement. I had in mind the idea of “knowing” in Light in August for my midterm as well. The following passage stuck with me throughout the reading of LIA: 

“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long grumbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than it’s, set in a grassless cinderstrewenedpacked compound surrounded by a smoking factory purlieus and enclosed  foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentiary or a zoom where in random erratic surges with sparrow liked child trembling, orphans in identical and uniform blye denim in and out of remember but in knowing contant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacnting chimneys streaked like black tears” (119). 

Possible Sources: 

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. 119-133. 

Schreiber Evelyn J. “‘Memory Believes Before Knowing Remebers’”: The instance of the Past and Lucans Unconscious Desire in ‘Light in August.’”  The Faulkner Journal, Vol. 20. No. ½, 2005, pp. 71-84.

Even though his narration was the most tricky to read, Benjy’s character crawls into my heart. In his narration, Benjy evidently has no perception of time and jumps from memory to memory whilst still “living” in the present. All objects, places, and experiences have the tendency to remind him and guide him into the memory such as a nail, a golf ball, the sight of flames, and more. Readers are able to collect that he has a disability yet what some may not realize is how much they could learn from Benjy when it comes to their own personal relationship with time. Day by day, people live in a sequential format because it is of course the norm, but could one argue that what makes life rich are the memories and experiences we endure throughout our lives? I make no argument against our current understanding of time and how time should lead us, but Faulkner definitely took his readers for a spin when giving us Benjy’s narration as the first of The Sound and the Fury. Benjy’s character and his ability to live solely through preceptors of different spots of time, allows readers to get the most of the Compson in just one fourth of the book. Although Benjy can see what is going on and live in that moment, he has no biases nor does he make any opinions, which allows readers to form their own as they get their very own first glance of the Compson family. I believe this was intentionally done by Faulkner. In Faulkner’s introduction for The Sound and the Fury, he explains that as he wrote this, he had no plan at all as to where the storyline would go. I believe that the jumbled-up events told through Benjy’s perspective is the product of that writing approach.

It is clear that no one really cares for Benjy, not even his mother who drowns in her self-pity could handle the fact that her son internally struggles. His sister Caddy, on the other hand, shows him warmth and care and seems to be the only one that does it. When he starts crying, she usually does comfort him. It makes sense that most of the memories that come up in this first section have to do with Caddy herself. I believe that these memories are what keep Benjy from being miserable as his family is constantly wanting to take him to an asylum. Any memory in which he can escape—so he does. As the memories unfold in the perspective of Benjy, readers are capitulated through a whirl winded journey that surround the moment Caddy had dirtied her underwear with soil this event was a foreshadowing of her later “dirtying” her family’s name (add to the reasons why her mother weeps). He had gotten upset afterward and the setting in which this event occurred never left him. Benjy believes that Caddy smells like trees. Later, when Benjy again smells the scent of trees he begins to cry. It reminds him of the underwear that were then dirty, and although she was told to wash off this perfume, he remained upset about it. Ultimately, Benjy understands that if Caddy were able to get involved with a man that it would signify that she would leave him which is why all of these memories make him so emotional. Despite Benjy having a disability and needing the care of so many more, he does not lack the intellect. He may work differently but the capacity remains strong in his character.

At the beginning of the last chapter, “The Odor of Verbena,” Bayard is approached by Professor Wilkins with the news that his father, Colonel Sartoris, has been killed. Immediately his plan is to take action against who was responsible for his fathers death. In the end, he decides not to take the life of the man who killed his own father which showcases Bayard’s moral development. It implicates major character growth because it is a completely different outcome than when his grandmother died previously. It could be argued that it was easier for Bayard to stand with courage and not kill a man in the case of his fathers death because his father was not as present as his grandmother was. Regardless, violence, specifically a violent death, seems to be passed generations down in the Bayards family. Other than the obvious fact that they are living during the Civil War, two parental figures of the protagonist die within violence. Bayard himself walks into a room with his fathers killer Redmond  and has shots fired at him. Yet, Bayard cheats death with the brave decision of walking in without intended violence towards Redmond. 

Moments before this occurs Bayard faces Drusilla. Although Bayard compares Drusilla to a “greek amphora priestess of a succinct and formal violence,” Faulkners mirroring connection to Greek tragedy also applies to the biblical phenomenom of Adam and Eve (174). Drusilla, similar to Eve, represents the “temptation” to sin or do wrong. She’s dressed in a beautiful “yellow ball gown with a sprig of verbena in her hair, holding the two loaded pistols” (174). The decievig temptation between Adam and Eve was the apple, the apple being tied to an unleashed evil, and the creeping temptation between Drusilla and Bayard are the pistols that she offers to him for him to commit the sin of killing (once again). The moment Bayard shares with his aunt Jenny emphasises the depth of seeking vengeance and foreshadows an “unleashed evil” if Bayard were to kill Redmond. Ultimately Bayard decides against such evil, healing the pain his fathers death caused him and blossoming into his most mature self–something that readers can enjoy watching in comparison to the beginning of the novel. The sprig of verbena in Drusellas hair symbolizes prayer, healing, and a protection against harm and evil. This sprig of verbena is much like the Garden of Eden with the similar naturalistic aspect, which holds promise and “paradise.” Bayard pins it onto his coat and with that carries the promise of healing with  him as he courageously makes his decision. Drusella was encouraging, or tempting, Bayard to take the pistols but instead his character decided to be “enveloped” in the scent of the verbena. The verbena seeps through his transgenerational trauma and grief: Bayard isthen  granted the paradise where we could conclude he finally grows into his morals and  maturity. Unlike Bayard, Adam falls for the temptations of the apple and unleashes an “evil” onto Earth whereas Bayard instead breaks the cycle of temptations/evil.  

With this take, one can question the representation Faulkner intended with Drusella’s character. Drusilla is represented as a strong woman that was not afraid of war, so could it be implied that strong women characters could be dangerous and/or decieving?  Or is he implying that women in some way have a savior complex?