As I Lay Dying (Norton Critical Edition)

by Faulkner,William

• ISBN13: 9780393931389
• ISBN10: 0393931382
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-04
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1985 corrected text and is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Backgrounds and Contexts#xE2;#x80;#x9D; is divided into three sections, each of which includes a concise introduction by Michael Gorra that carefully frames the issues presented, with particular attention to As I Lay Dying#xE2;#x80;#x99;s place in Faulkner#xE2;#x80;#x99;s literary life. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Contemporary Reception#xE2;#x80;#x9D; reprints American, English, and French reviews by Clifton Fadiman, Henry Nash Smith, Edwin Muir, and Maurice Coindreau, among others, along with Valery Larbaud#xE2;#x80;#x99;s never-before-translated preface to the first French edition of the novel. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;The Writer and His Work#xE2;#x80;#x9D; examines Faulkner#xE2;#x80;#x99;s claim to have written the novel in six weeks without changing a word. It includes his comments on the book#xE2;#x80;#x99;s composition along with his later thoughts on and changing opinions of it, sample pages from the manuscript, his Nobel Prize address, and the little-known short story in which he first used the title. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Cultural Context#xE2;#x80;#x9D; reprints an essay by Carson McCullers and an excerpt from James Agee#xE2;#x80;#x99;s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men along with other materials that address questions of Southern Agrarianism and the Southern grotesque. #xE2;#x80;#x9C;Criticism#xE2;#x80;#x9D; begins with the editor#xE2;#x80;#x99;s introduction to As I Lay Dying#xE2;#x80;#x99;s critical history and scholarly reception. Eleven major essays are provided by Olga W. Vickery, Cleanth Brooks, Calvin Bedient, Andr#xC3;#xA9; Bleikasten, Eric Sundquist, Stephen M. Ross, Doreen Fowler, Patrick O#xE2;#x80;#x99;Donnell, Richard Gray, John Limon, and Donald M. Kartiganer. A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Note on the Text

The Text of As I Lay Dying

Backgrounds and Contexts

Contemporary Reception

Beside Addie's Coffin

Literature and Less

Morbidity in Fiction

A Troubled Vision

The School of Cruelty

William Faulkner

"Preface" to Tandis que j'agonise

From New Novels

The Writer and His Work

Adolescence

As I Lay Dying

Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Sanctuary

An Introduction for The Sound and the Fury

Address upon Receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature

The Paris Review Interview

Class Conferences at the University of Virginia

Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi [Map]

Sample pages from the manuscript and carbon typescript of As I Lay Dying

Cultural Context

The Russian Realists and Southern Literature

Benighted South

The Hind Tit

The Gudger House

From Pills, Petticoats and Plows: The Southern Country Store

Thirty-Sixth Biennial Report of the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, Jackson, Mississippi. From July 1, 1925 to June 30, 1927

Criticism

The Dimension of Consciousness

Odyssey of the Bundrens

Pride and Nakedness: As I Lay Dying

The Setting

Death, Grief, Analogous Form: As I Lay Dying

Mimetic Voice

Matricide and the Mother's Revenge: As I Lay Dying

Between the Family and the State: Nomadism and Authority in As I Lay Dying

A Southern Carnival

Addie in No Man's Land

"By It I Would Stand or Fall": Life and Death in As I Lay Dying

A Chronology

Selected Bibliography

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