Faulkner

by Honnighausen, Lothar

• ISBN13: 9780878059980
• ISBN10: 0878059989
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781604736182
• Additional ISBN(s): 9781604736182
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi

Summary

A Critical Study of the Ruses and Roles with which Faulkner Masked Himself and His Characters That Faulkner was a "liar" not just in his writing but also in his life has troubled many critics. They have explained his numerous "false stories", particularly those about military honors he actually never earned and war wounds he never sustained, with psychopathological imposture-theories. The drawback of this approach is that it reduces and oversimplifies the complex psychological and aesthetic phenomenon of Faulkner's role-playing. Instead, this critical study by one of the most acclaimed international Faulkner scholars takes its cue from Nietzsche's concept of "truth as a mobile army of metaphors" and from Ricoeur's dynamic view of metaphor and treats the wearing of masks not as an ontological issue but as a matter of discourse. Honnighausen examines Faulkner's interviews and photographs for the fictions they perpetuate. Such Faulknerian role-playing he interprets as a mode of organizing experience and relates it to the crafting of the artist's various personae in his works. Mining metaphor as well as modem theories on social role-playing, Honnighausen examines unexplored aspects of image creation and image reception in such major Faulkner novels as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, A Fable, and Absalom, Absalom!

Table of Contents

Introduction	ix	(4)
Primary Texts: List of Abbreviations	xiii
Preludes	3	(76)
1. Role-Play in Photos, Letters, and Interviews	3	(53)
2. Masks and Metaphors: On Theory	56	(23)
Masks and Metaphors of the Artist	79	(58)
3. The Artist as Visionary and as "Craftsman": "Black Music," "Carcassonne," "Artist at Home," Elmer, and Mosquitoes	79	(32)
4. The Artist as "Human Failure": Mosquitoes, Flags in the Dust, The Town, and As I Lay Dying	111	(26)
Metaphorizing and Role-Play in Narration and Reading	137	(126)
5. New Modes of Metaphor: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and A Fable	137	(20)
6. Metaphor and Narrative in Absalom, Absalom!	157	(26)
7. Faulkner and the Regionalist Context	183	(40)
8. Regionalism and Beyond: The Hamlet	223	(40)
Conclusion: Pastoral Portrait	263	(16)
Notes	279	(10)
Works Cited	289	(12)
Index	301