Faulkner and Formalism

Returns of the Text
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62846-065-0
Verlag: University Press of Mississippi

Buch, Englisch, 228 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 377 g

Reihe: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series

Faulkner and Formalism: Returns of the Text collects eleven essays in which contributors query the status of Faulkner's literary text in contemporary criticism and scholarship. How do scholars today approach Faulkner's texts? For some, including Arthur F. Kinney and James B. Carothers, ""returns of the text"" is a phrase that raises questions of aesthetics, poetics, and authority. For others, the phrase serves as an invitation to return to Faulkner's language, to writing and the letter itself. Serena Blount, Owen Robinson, James Harding, and Taylor Hagood interpret ""returns of the text"" in the sense in which Roland Barthes characterizes this shift in his seminal essay ""From Work to Text."" Faulkner's language itself is under close scrutiny in some of the readings that emphasize a deconstructive or a semiological approach to his writing. Historical and cultural contexts continue to play significant roles, however, in many of the essays such as those by Thadious Davis, Ted Atkinson, Martyn Bone, and Ethel Young-Minor. Instead of approaching the literary text as a reflection, a representation of that context, these readings stress the role of the text as a challenge to the power of external ideological systems. By retaining a bond with new historicist analysis and cultural studies, these essays are illustrative of a kind of analysis that carefully preserves attention to Faulkner's sociopolitical environment. The concluding essay by Theresa M. Towner issues an invitation to return to Faulkner's less well-known short stories for critical exposure and the pleasure of reading.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Trefzer, Annette

Abadie, Ann J.

Über Autor(innen)

Annette Trefzer is associate professor in the Department of English at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Disturbing Indians: The Archaeology of Southern Fiction. Ann J. Abadie is associate director emerita of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and the coeditor of numerous volumes in the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series.