Faulkner S Revision Of Absalom Absalom

Faulkner’s Revision of Absalom, Absalom! is a study of the creative process as exemplified in one of the major achievements in twentieth-century fiction. Portions of the original handwritten version of the story are collated, line by line, with corresponding sections of the published version. In an introductory discussion the major changes are analyzed and evaluated. It is particularly interesting to observe Faulkner revising not only his choice of words and the construction of his sentences but also the central design of the story. Most notably, he changed his mind about having it known from the beginning that Charles Bon was Sutpen’s part-Negro son, and he developed Quentin Compson into the pivotal figure who finally supplies this missing piece of information. In the process of revision Absalom, Absalom! became a kind of detective story, and the reader is forced to join the quest and participate in the undertaking which is the basic subject of the book—the human attempt to comprehend and deal with the past. To trace the process of this revision is to experience a sharp focusing of theme and to witness a demonstration of how the meaning of a fictional work can shape its structure and, in turn, stand revealed by what has become the outward sign, or form, of that meaning.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Outraged and Amazed focuses on how Absalom, Absalom!’s complex narrative functions as a vehicle through which social order in the South is represented, challenged and renegotiated. Exploring Quentin Compson’s attempt to understand his own identity through the complicated and incomplete story of Thomas Sutpen, it demonstrates how the poetics, structure and central conflicts of the novel derive from a combination of its characters’ intense resistance to their proscribed social limitations and their desire to wrest control of their identities through and from the act of storytelling. Intending to present a narrative that could explain the past in a way that makes sense of their world and their place in it, these would-be authors are instead confronted with their limitations and the inadequacy of their knowledge. Outraged and Amazed explores the bewildering, tangled, dislocated, and confused story we are left with – a story of the South that is plausible but unverifiable, at once self-reflexively fictive and true.

The story of an old Southern tragedy which befalls the Sutpen family. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Quentin Compson narrates the story of his family’s African-American washerwoman, Nancy, who fears that her husband will murder her because she is pregnant with a white-man’s child. The events in the story are witnessed by a young Quentin and his two siblings, Caddy and Jason, who do not fully understand the adult world of race and class conflict that they are privy to. Although primarily known for his novels, William Faulkner wrote in a variety of formats, including plays, poetry, essays, screenplays, and short stories, many of which are highly acclaimed and anthologized. Like his novels, many of Faulkner’s short stories are set in fictional Yoknapatawapha County, a setting inspired by Lafayette County, where Faulkner spent most of his life. His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most frequently anthologized stories, including "A Rose for Emily", "Red Leaves" and "That Evening Sun." HarperCollins brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperCollins short-stories collection to build your digital library.

Absalom, Absalom! has long been seen as one of William Faulkner's supreme creations, as well as one of the leading American novels of the twentieth century. In this collection Fred Hobson has brought together eight of the most stimulating essays on Absalom, essays written over a thirty-year span which approach the novel both formally and historically. Here are critical responses by Cleanth Brooks, John Irwin, Thadious Davis, and Eric Sundquist, as well as four essays published in the last decade. The casebook concludes with Faulkner's own remarks on the novel, delivered in a discussion with students at the University of Virginia. What emerges from all the selections is a rich and suggestive treatment of a work which Faulkner himself called "the best novel yet written by an American" and a less biased critic has called "the greatest American novel of the century... joining Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn at the pinnacle of American fiction."

A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 How do we read William Faulkner in the twenty-first century? asks Michael Gorra, in this reconsideration of Faulkner's life and legacy. William Faulkner, one of America’s most iconic writers, is an author who defies easy interpretation. Born in 1897 in Mississippi, Faulkner wrote such classic novels as Absolom, Absolom! and The Sound and The Fury, creating in Yoknapatawpha county one of the most memorable gallery of characters ever assembled in American literature. Yet, as acclaimed literary critic Michael Gorra explains, Faulkner has sustained justified criticism for his failures of racial nuance—his ventriloquism of black characters and his rendering of race relations in a largely unreconstructed South—demanding that we reevaluate the Nobel laureate’s life and legacy in the twenty-first century, as we reexamine the junctures of race and literature in works that once rested firmly in the American canon. Interweaving biography, literary criticism, and rich travelogue, The Saddest Words argues that even despite these contradictions—and perhaps because of them—William Faulkner still needs to be read, and even more, remains central to understanding the contradictions inherent in the American experience itself. Evoking Faulkner’s biography and his literary characters, Gorra illuminates what Faulkner maintained was “the South’s curse and its separate destiny,” a class and racial system built on slavery that was devastated during the Civil War and was reimagined thereafter through the South’s revanchism. Driven by currents of violence, a “Lost Cause” romanticism not only defined Faulkner’s twentieth century but now even our own age. Through Gorra’s critical lens, Faulkner’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County comes alive as his imagined land finds itself entwined in America’s history, the characters wrestling with the ghosts of a past that refuses to stay buried, stuck in an unending cycle between those two saddest words, “was” and “again.” Upending previous critical traditions, The Saddest Words returns Faulkner to his sociopolitical context, revealing the civil war within him and proving that “the real war lies not only in the physical combat, but also in the war after the war, the war over its memory and meaning.” Filled with vignettes of Civil War battles and generals, vivid scenes from Gorra’s travels through the South—including Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi—and commentaries on Faulkner’s fiction, The Saddest Words is a mesmerizing work of literary thought that recontextualizes Faulkner in light of the most plangent cultural issues facing America today.