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William
Faulkner
(1897-1962)
from
"Fields of Vision by D.Delaney”
Life
Military service and university William Faulkner grew up in the Southern town of Oxford,
Mississippi.
After dropping out of high school he joined the Canadian and later the British
Royal Air Force during the First World War, but was never involved directly in
battle. In 1919, under a special provision for war veterans, he briefly studied
at the University of Mississippi, then worked in a bookstore in New York and for a New
Orleans newspaper.
Paris In 1925 Faulkner briefly lived near Paris but did not mix with the intellectual
circle of expatriates.
Success and fame
Back in the States, Faulkner married and, because he was short of money,
drifted through several jobs and wrote stories and essays purely for financial
gain. When he started exploring the Southern environment and culture he was so
familiar with, he produced the novels that finally won him unconditional
acclaim. His masterpiece, The Sound and
the Fury, published in 1929, was followed by a series of equally successful
novels that won him two Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1949.
Life on a farm
Apart from some trips to Europe and Asia, and some brief stays in Hollywood as a scriptwriter, Faulkner lived for the rest
of his life on a farm in his hometown of Oxford
and in Virginia.
He died in 1962 of a heart attack.
Works
Yoknapatawpha cycle Faulkner
is best known for the series of novels he wrote that constitute the "Yoknapatawpha
cycle”, a saga spanning almost a century and a half and recounting the life of
the inhabitants of a fictional Mississippi
County, Yoknapatawpha.
The unifying theme of the work is the decadence of the old South, with the
dissolution of traditional values and the emergence to prominent positions in
the community of people whose only value is money. Moral decay, and the devastating
effects of racial prejudice are also explored.
Main works
Faulkner’s best works include The Sound
and the Fury, As I Lay Dying (1930),
Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), The Hamlet (1940), Intruder in the Dust (1948) and Requiem
for a Nun (1951). He was also a prolific short-story writer (These 13 and Big Woods, published in 1931 and 1955 respectively). Some of the
short stories belong to the Yoknapatawpha saga and include the same characters
and themes as the novels.
Style Faulkner’s style is highly symbolic and
richly descriptive. Events are often recounted through interior monologues. His
most accomplished work, The Sound and the Fury, makes extensive use of this
technique. Innovative in style and structure, the novel portrays the moral and
social decline of a family in a four-part framework, with each section told by
a different narrator. Faulkner’s psychological analysis and successful
stylistic experimentation make him an author who, building on a strictly local
tradition, was able to create works of universal value. External Links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Faulkner | |