Critical Essays On William Faulkner

Critical Essays on William Faulkner compiles scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. Ranging from 1980 to 2020, the twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer—particularly in his treatment of race—the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts. The volume includes discussions of Faulkner’s techniques and the psychological underpinnings of both the origin and the form of his art; explores how his writing is a means of “saying 'no' to death"; examines the intertextual linkages of his fiction with that of other writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, Warren, and Salinger; treats Faulkner’s use of myth and his fondness for the initiation motif; and argues that Faulkner’s film work in Hollywood is much better and of far greater value than most scholars have acknowledged. Taken as a whole, Hamblin’s essays suggest that Faulkner’s overarching themes relate to time and consequent change. The history of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha stretches from the arrival of the white settlers on the Mississippi frontier in the early 1800s to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. Caught in this world of continual change that produces a great degree of uncertainty and ambivalence, the Faulkner character (and reader) must weigh the traditions of the past with the demands of the present and the future. As Faulkner acknowledges, this process of discovery and growth is a difficult and sometimes painful one; yet, as Hamblin attests, to engage in that quest is to realize the very essence of what it means to be human.

Critical Essays on William Faulkner compiles scholarship by noted Faulkner studies scholar Robert W. Hamblin. Ranging from 1980 to 2020, the twenty-one essays present a variety of approaches to Faulkner’s work. While acknowledging Faulkner as the quintessential southern writer—particularly in his treatment of race—the essays examine his work in relation to American and even international contexts. The volume includes discussions of Faulkner’s techniques and the psychological underpinnings of both the origin and the form of his art; explores how his writing is a means of “saying 'no' to death"; examines the intertextual linkages of his fiction with that of other writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Steinbeck, Warren, and Salinger; treats Faulkner’s use of myth and his fondness for the initiation motif; and argues that Faulkner’s film work in Hollywood is much better and of far greater value than most scholars have acknowledged. Taken as a whole, Hamblin’s essays suggest that Faulkner’s overarching themes relate to time and consequent change. The history of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha stretches from the arrival of the white settlers on the Mississippi frontier in the early 1800s to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the 1940s. Caught in this world of continual change that produces a great degree of uncertainty and ambivalence, the Faulkner character (and reader) must weigh the traditions of the past with the demands of the present and the future. As Faulkner acknowledges, this process of discovery and growth is a difficult and sometimes painful one; yet, as Hamblin attests, to engage in that quest is to realize the very essence of what it means to be human.

Contemporary critical opinion and commentary on William Faulkner and his works.

This collection of essays provides a window on Faulkner's work by concentrating on one aspect of it - his use of clans to chronicle the decay of the post-Civil-War South. It records the history of criticism on the McCaslins and their related family lines (Beauchamp, Edmonds and Priest) which figure in novels such as Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust. The book considers the raw materials - newspaper extracts and court records - used by Faulkner to construct his accounts, and includes a genealogy of the families and photographs that show some of the original people and places on which Faulkner based his characters and situations.

A selection of articles and essays on William Faulkner's Sartoris family.

This second of a two-volume set reprints seven background statements by Faulkner (one interview, three essays and three addresses) and 20 critical essays, with a selected list of recommended readings. The essays deal with 15 novels and discuss Faulkner's reading, style, technique and racial attitudes.

An essential collection of William Faulkner’s mature nonfiction work, updated, with an abundance of new material. This unique volume includes Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a review of Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea (in which he suggests that Hemingway has found God), and newly collected gems, such as the acerbic essay “On Criticism” and the beguiling “Note on A Fable.” It also contains eloquently opinionated public letters on everything from race relations and the nature of fiction to wild-squirrel hunting on his property. This is the most comprehensive collection of Faulkner’s brilliant non-fiction work, and a rare look into the life of an American master.

Among the well-known critics represented in "Faulkner: The Unappeased Imagination" are Melvin Backman, Duane MacMillan, Edmond Volpe, Sanford Pinsker, Richard Milum, and John Howell, including the editor, Glenn O. Carey. Besides outstanding criticism about Faulkner's fiction, as the editor has written, "It is of special interests to include the 1947 interview of Faulkner by Harry Modean Campbell, an early pre-Nobel Prize Faulkner scholar, whose book with Ruel E. Foster, "William Faulkner: A Critical Appraisal," was pioneering in its analysis."