Faulkner And The Native Keystone

The last fifty years have witnessed a never-ending flow of criticism of William Faulkner and his fiction. While this book touches on the prevailing critical theory, it concentrates on a number of fresh observations on themes and motifs that place William Faulkner’s fiction in general, regional, global and universal contexts of American and Western literature. Paying special attention to themes and motifs of racism, sexism, women's education, myths and stereotypes – to mention just a few — the book analyzes Faulkner’s ability to write and to be read within and beyond his “native keystone” – his South. Coming from a non US-Americanist perspective, this contribution to the scholarly literature on William Faulkner discusses his best-known novels, contends that regionalism, internationalism and universalism are the context of his fiction and argues for feminist, post-colonial, and psychoanalytical approaches to it. The book is intended for scholars in the field of American literature, American Studies and Southern Studies as it covers the South’s complex history, its peculiar cultural institutions and the daunting body of international critical studies that has flourished around the novels during the last five decades. Graduate students will also find this book useful as it analyzes and interprets the novels and short stories of one of the greatest American novelists of the 20th century in an easily understandable way, offering new and fresh readings on (1) race and gender stereotypes present in American and European culture and literature, (2) conventions of family/genealogical fiction/drama and (3) universal life situations and feelings.

Contributions by Eric Gary Anderson, Melanie R. Anderson, Jodi A. Byrd, Gina Caison, Robbie Ethridge, Patricia Galloway, LeAnne Howe, John Wharton Lowe, Katherine M. B. Osburn, Melanie Benson Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson From new insights into the Chickasaw sources and far-reaching implications of Faulkner’s fictional place-name “Yoknapatawpha,” to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner’s fiction (including but not limited to the novels and stories he devoted explicitly to Native American topics), the eleven essays of this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner’s Native South and the Native South’s Faulkner. Critics push beyond assessments of the historical accuracy of his Native representations and the colonial hybridity of his Indian characters. Essayists turn instead to indigenous intellectual culture for new models, problems, and questions to bring to Faulkner studies. Along the way, readers are treated to illuminating comparisons between Faulkner’s writings and the work of a number of Native American authors, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and historical figures. Faulkner and the Native South brings together Native and non-Native scholars in a stimulating and often surprising critical dialogue about the indigenous wellsprings of Faulkner’s creative energies and about Faulkner’s own complicated presence in Native American literary history.

Contributions by Eric Gary Anderson, Melanie R. Anderson, Jodi A. Byrd, Gina Caison, Robbie Ethridge, Patricia Galloway, LeAnne Howe, John Wharton Lowe, Katherine M. B. Osburn, Melanie Benson Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson From new insights into the Chickasaw sources and far-reaching implications of Faulkner's fictional place-name "Yoknapatawpha," to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner's fiction (including but not limited to the novels and stories he devoted explicitly to Native American topics), the eleven essays of this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner's Native South and the Native South's Faulkner. Critics push beyond assessments of the historical accuracy of his Native representations and the colonial hybridity of his Indian characters. Essayists turn instead to indigenous intellectual culture for new models, problems, and questions to bring to Faulkner studies. Along the way, readers are treated to illuminating comparisons between Faulkner's writings and the work of a number of Native American authors, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and historical figures. Faulkner and the Native South brings together Native and non-Native scholars in a stimulating and often surprising critical dialogue about the indigenous wellsprings of Faulkner's creative energies and about Faulkner's own complicated presence in Native American literary history.

Owing to the diverse research interests of the contributors, this collection of essays offers a varied picture of the current approaches to Anglo-American literature and culture, and points to the need for a deeper understanding of current cultural, economic and social processes in the globalizing and globalized culture of the West. Because “crisis” seems to be the key word of contemporary Western culture, the first part of the book, titled “In the Face of Crises”, explores the implicit or explicit idea of a crisis between the real and the simulated, suggesting that one of the major issues for the contemporary man is how to deal with the virtual or with the “absence of the real”. Our fast-paced, technology-laden and materialist-oriented existence brings about the need to rethink our human identity, putting into perspective our relationship to technology, the impact of capitalist economy and colonial past, as well as consequences of constant warfare. The second part of the book, “New Perspectives on Literary Genres”, analyzes forms, topics and styles in literary texts belonging to specific, sometimes marginalized, genres. Literary analyses in this section also touch upon the idea of crisis: be it the crisis of understanding and redefining a particular genre, or a crisis that is inherent in the controversial topic or form of the text. As a reaction to recent allegations concerning the crisis of humanities as “non-profitable”, this book shows that humanist research is indispensable and crucial for understanding the human condition, making this book a relevant addition to the contemporary discussion of literature and culture.

Space and time, their infiniteness and/or their limit(ation)s, their coding, conceptualization and the relationship between the two, have been intriguing people for millennia. Linguistics and literature are no exceptions in this sense. This book brings together eight essays which all deal with the expression of space and/or time in language and/or literature. The book explores the issues of space, time and their interrelation from two different perspectives: the linguistic and the literary. The first section—Time and Space in Language—contains four papers which focus on linguistics, i.e. explore issues relative to the expression of time and space in natural languages. The topics under consideration include: typology regarding the expression of spatial information in languages around the world (Ch.1), space as expressed and conceptualized in neutral, postural and verbs of fictive motion (Ch. 2), prepositional semantics (Ch.3), aspectuality (in Tamil, Ch. 4). All articles propose innovative topics and/or approaches, crossreferring when possible between space and time. Given that all seem to propose at least some elements of “language universality” vs. “language variability”, the strong cognitivist nature of the approach (even when the paper is not written within a cognitive linguistic framework) represents a particularly strong feature of the section, with a strong appeal to experts from fields that need not necessarily be linguistic. The second section of this volume—Space and Time in Literature—brings together four essays dealing with literary topics. Inherent in each narrative are both temporal and spatial implications because a literary text testifies of a certain time, it is from and about a certain period, as well as about a certain space, even if virtual. A particularly strong feature of these papers is that they envision space and time as complementary parameters of experience and not as conceptual opposites, following the transfer of perspective through the whole century. Departing from the late nineteenth century England’s and Croatia’s fictive spaces (Ch. 5), the topic moves via the American Southern Gothic, focusing on Faulkner from the thirties to the early sixties (Ch. 6), via the post-WWII perspectives on history, probing the postmodern context of temporality (Ch 7), to finally reach the contemporary era of post 9/11 space-time (Ch 8). The voyage from chapter five to eight is thus a journey through space and time that allows for some answers to the nature of reality (of a variety of space-times) as conceived by both the authors of these essays as well as by the authors that these essays discuss. The main goal of the editors has been to bring together different scientific traditions which can contribute complementary concerns and methodologies to the issues under exam; from the literary and descriptive via the diachronic and typological explorations all the way to cognitive (linguistic) analyses, bordering psycholinguistics and neuroscience. One of the strengths of this volume thus lies in the diversity of perspectives articulated within it, where the agreements, but also the controversies and divergences demonstrate constant changes in society which, in turn, shapes our views of space-time/reality. All this also suggests that science and literature are not above or apart from their culture, but embedded within it, and that there exists a strong relativistic interrelation between (spatio-temporal) reality and culture. The only hope to objectively envisage any if not all of the above, is by learning how to move (our thought) through space, time or, to put it in simpler terms, how to shift perspectives.

The Gothic began as a designation for barbarian tribes, was associated with the cathedrals of the High Middle Ages, was used to describe a marginalized literature in the late eighteenth century, and continues today in a variety of forms (literature, film, graphic novel, video games, and other narrative and artistic forms). Unlike other recent books in the field that focus on certain aspects of the Gothic, this work directs researchers to seminal and significant resources on all of its aspects. Annotations will help researchers determine what materials best suit their needs. A Research Guide to Gothic Literature in English covers Gothic cultural artifacts such as literature, film, graphic novels, and videogames. This authoritative guide equips researchers with valuable recent information about noteworthy resources that they can use to study the Gothic effectively and thoroughly.

Southern Screens: Cinema, culture and the global South adopts a transversal south-south approach to the study of screen culture across national and cultural territories. It examines the conditions by which screen culture participates in the generation, sharing, and circulation of new knowledge that is both southern and about the global South. The contributors, all of them residents of the world’s southernmost nations, examine new and traditional media that manifests an affinity with southern cultural imaginaries and territories identifiable through the sociological category of "Global South." Some of their chapters engage in analysis linked to specific national contexts, others follow comparative approaches to screen culture across national, regional, and socio-historical borders. Sketching a new tapestry of references to other areas of southern social science and cultural theory, Southern Screens traces a critical genealogy that here finds a productive place within an emerging, comparative discussion of the screen cultures of the Global South. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies.