Congrats are in order to our own Saida Bogdanovich, who won this year’s Mary McElligott Gloster Prize for her essay, “The Merchant of Venice: The Dismissal and Duplication of Jewish Stereotypes.”

Who new we were within Zoom range of greatness a couple of times a week?!

The computer scientist Charles Hannon has done amazing work in visualizing various aspects of literature: part of what we call the “digital humanities.” Here is a blog post that argues that Faulkner’s “network” in the novel was influenced by the expanse of “rural electification” in the mid-1930s in the rural South. And here’s the diagram, which we’ll look at today:

Last week I submitted a Yoknapedia entry on Quentin’s reference to St. Francis’s “Canticle of the Sun” in TSAF and how the saint and his famous hymn haunt other areas of the novel. I didn’t have time to research and write about everything I wanted, so for my final project I’d like to expand on the entry by elaborating on what I’ve already written and exploring additional correspondences between Francis and the novel. Some of those additional areas include:

• How Jason’s view of nature (specifically birds and farming) aligns with his spirituality and view of God (deterministic, authoritarian, pessimistic, cynical), and where they conflict, and perhaps also align, with Francis’s views
• The echoes between Quentin’s sexuality and ideals of purity (his virginity, conflicted view of Caddy’s sexuality, shame regarding his kiss with Natalie) and Francis’s chastity and physical suppression of his sexual desires as described in Thomas of Celano’s First Life.
• How the anthropomorphic images of God and nature in Francis’s “Canticle of the Sun” tie in with the characters’ anthropomorphic conceptions of God
• The link between Faulkner’s likening of Quentin to Round Table knights and Francis’s own knighthood, first in his youth during a border conflict and later as one in service to God (his faith and lifestyle as a friar have been described as militant, despite his pacifism).

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How did Hightower overcome the traumatic legacy that had him trapped in the past and isolated from Jefferson’s community in order to rejoin the land of the living by the end of the novel?

Sources

Bell, Katie. “Dickens and Faulkner: Saving Joe Christmas.” Dickens after Dickens. White Rose University Press, 2020. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv12fw7r4.8.

Doyle, Laura. “The Body Against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenology of Race.” American Literature, vol. 73, no. 2, 2001, pp. 339-364. MUSE.jhu.edu/article/1668.

Feldman, Robert L. Feldman. “In Defense of Reverend Hightower: It Is Never Too Late.” CLA Journal, vol. 29, no. 3, 1986, pp. 352-367. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44321908

Hasratian, Avak. “The Death of Difference in Light in August.” Project Muse, vol. 49, no. 1, 2007, pp. 55-84. MUSE.jhu.edu/article/233131.

Hayes Tully, Susan. “Joanna Burden: ‘It’s the dead folks that do him the damage.’” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 355-371. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26475418.

Howell, Elmo. “Reverend Hightower and the Uses of Southern Adversity.” College English, vol. 24, no. 3, 1962, pp. 183-187. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/373282.

            Williams, John S. “’The Final Copper Light of Afternoon’: Hightower’s Redemption.” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 13, no. 4, 1968, pp. 205-215. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/440929.

I had read the Melanie Klein prior to picking the topic, and have the book of her essays in my personal collection. Got Irwin from the Queens Library a couple weeks ago, since I had read somewhere that it was a classic of psychoanalytic Faulkner criticism. My psychoanalyst recommended Segal. I found the rest of the articles and book chapters from Hunter OneSearch and the MLA thing that the librarian showed us. Searched for “Faulkner” and/or “Light in August” in the subject field, combined with “Christmas,” “Psych*,” or “Freud,” and probably some others that I can’t remember. This list will certainly be culled before the annotated version is due.

Faulkner, William. Novels, 1930-1935. New York, NY: Literary Classics of the United States, 1985.

Irwin, John T. Doubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative Reading of Faulkner. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude & Other Works, 1946-1963. New York: Delacorte Press/S. Lawrence, 1975.

McDowell, Deborah E. “‘Must Have Been Love’: Sexualities’ Attachments in Faulkner.” Faulkner’s Sexualities, edited by Annette Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 2010, pp. 94-114.

Schreiber, Evelyn. “‘Memory Believes Before Knowing Remembers’: The Insistence of the Past and Lacan’s Unconscious Desire in ‘Light in August.'” The Faulkner Journal 20.1/2 (2004): 71-84.

Segal, Hanna. Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London: Hogarth Press [for] the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1973.

Stringer, D. “Memory as Fetish: Light in August.” Misrecognition, Race and the Real in Faulkner’s Fiction, edited by M. Zeitlin, A. Bleikasten, and N. Moulinoux. Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004, pp. 113-126.

Toomey, David. “A Jungian Reading of Light in August’s ‘Christmas Sections.'” The Southern Quarterly 28.2 (1990): 43-57.

Watkins, Ralph. ” ‘It Was Like I Was the Woman and She Was the Man’: Boundaries, Portals, and Pollution in ‘Light in August.’ ” The Southern Literary Journal 26.2 (1994): 11-24.

Simple Bibliography

Gwin, Minrose C. “Feminism and Faulkner: Second Thoughts or, What’s a Radical Feminist Doing with a Canonical Male Text Anyway?” Faulkner Journal, vol. 4, no. 1/2, 1988, pp. 55–65. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24907571. 

Hustis, Harriet. “The Tangled Webs We Weave: Faulkner Scholarship and the Significance of Addie Bundren’s Monologue.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24907827. 

Kerr, Elizabeth M. “The Women of Yoknapatawpha.” Studies in English, vol. 15, Article 9, 1978, pp. 1-18. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/ms_studies_eng/vol15/iss1/9

Kerr, Elizabeth M.  “William Faulkner And The Southern Concept Of Woman.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 1, 1961, pp. 1–16. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26473422. 

Storhoff, Gary. “Caddy and the Infinite Loop: The Dynamics of Alcoholism in ‘The Sound and the Fury.’” Faulkner Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 1997, pp. 3–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24907773. 

I started my research process using the Hunter Library Database, clicking on subjects, selecting English and I went straight to JSTOR. I also used Google Scholar. I started it with the keywords “Faulkner AND women” (I used the strategy “AND” as Jennifer Newman suggested and it was very helpful).  About 22,000 results came up, so to reduce it, I used the filters journals, language, and literature, publication date. Looking at the journal articles became easier when I applied the filters because obviously, it was more of what I am looking for. I started reading the articles that I am selecting for my research project and rejecting the ones that did not convince me. In the sources I found so far, there are comparisons or mentions about Faulkner’s women: Caddy, Miss Quentin, Addie, Dewey Dell, and Lena, which are the women I am interested in researching for my topic. Even though I would like to focus on only one or two novels, The Sound and The Fury and/or As I Lay Dying.

How does the growing influence of modern consumerism impact the lives of the female characters in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying? 

Addie, Dewey Dell, and Cora, in their own ways, try to reclaim their bodies from patriarchal society and create their own identity. My idea was formed by my interest in Faulkner’s presentation of Dewey Dell and her attempt at getting an abortion. The comparison of the three women in the book also intrigued me, in terms of how they tried to fight for control over their own bodies and their inability to access education or contraception to help them. I will most likely focus on the comparison of Dewey Dell with the other female characters and examine Faulkner’s commentary on modern consumerism’s failure to improve access to contraceptives. 

Sources so far: 

Holcombe, Heather E. “Faulkner on Feminine Hygiene, or, How Margaret Sanger Sold Dewey Dell a Bad Abortion.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 57, no. 2, 2011, pp. 203–229. 

“Reading White Trash: Class, Race, and Mobility in Faulkner and Le Sueur.” American Mobilities: Geographies of Class, Race, and Gender in US Culture, by Julia Leyda, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2016, pp. 33–60. 

Williams, Tyler. “How Faulkner Means Everything He Says: An Essay on James Baldwin’s Politics of Intentionality.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 2015, pp. 49–64.

So, I was just way too worried/anxious/nervous about the election to have come up with a question before, but now that blue has won (yay!!!!), I am now able to formulate thoughts again. Here’s a combined post for my research question and simple bibliography.

Research Question

So, for my research topic, I wanted to go down the path of Faulkner and the idea of feminism. I know that I possibly want to include both The Sound and The Fury (regarding Caddy) and As I Lay Dying (regarding Addie) in my research paper. For my secondary sources, I’ll most likely be looking at JSTOR and the Faulkner Journal. A working question that I have is: How do Faulkner’s works provide insight to how he viewed the subject of women and their rights? As I said, this is a working question, so I might end up changing it up a bit (if there are any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment).

Simple Bibliography

For my research process, I automatically opened up the Faulkner Journal and typed in the word “feminism.” I figured that this would give a pretty good list of pieces from the journal that would deal with the topic I was interested in. I also decided to take a look at the Mississippi Quarterly to try and find some other sources to work with, as I thought that there may be a source or two there that I could work with. I only briefly skimmed each source before putting it on my list of working sources, so I may end up changing them out at a later date.

(Possible) Sources

Gwin, Minrose C. “Feminism and Faulkner: Second Thoughts Or, what’s a Radical Feminist Doing with a Canonical Male Text Anyway?” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 1988, pp. 55. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311475609?accountid=27495.

Henninger, Katherine. “”it’s a Outrage”: Pregnancy and Abortion in Faulkner’s Fiction of the Thirties.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1996, pp. 23. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311476658?accountid=27495.

Jones, Anne Goodwyn. “The Feminine and Faulkner: Reading (Beyond) Sexual Difference.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, 1994, p. 521+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A15939715/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=b9cc2094.

Ma, Te. “‘WHO WAS THE WOMAN?’; FEMININE SPACE AND THE SHAPING OF IDENTITY IN THE SOUND AND THE FURY.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 28, no. 2, 2014, p. 39+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A517879034/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=4cc55155.

Mortimer, Gail L. “The “Masculinity” of Faulkner’s Thought.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 1988, pp. 67. ProQuest, http://proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/docview/1311475635?accountid=27495.

In the Jefferson chronicles, Faulkner introduces an assortment of female characters who are equally as much a tour de force as the novels that they inhabit. Characters like Caddy, Dewey Dell, Addie, and Lena all fight against the “Jane Austen” archetype (for lack of a better comparison) of how a woman is supposed to behave in society. Faulkner doesn’t shy away from centralizing fallen women, promiscuity, and unrestrained behavior. It could be argued that the women in our four novels all end up in better places than the men in terms of self realization and this just begs to be dissected. Most of the women aren’t plagued by a crippling state of mind, and if they are, at least they know how to go towards a solution. The questions, therefore are: How does Faulkner use his female characters to challenge the heteronormative behavior of his male characters? Are his female characters socially superior because of their social independence in a rigid world dominated by hyper masculine southern values? Are the women therefore more masculine between the sexes?

Clarke, Deborah. Robbing the Mother: Women in Faulkner. N.p., 1994. Print

Oklopčić, Biljana. “Destination South: Lena Grove’s ‘Like a Lady Travelling.’” Neohelicon: Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, vol. 46, no. 2, Dec. 2019, pp. 557–573. EBSCOhost, 

Polk, Noel. Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Print.

Bain, Grant. “Boxing Yoknapatawpha: Faulkner, Race, and Popular Front Boxing Narratives.” The Southern literary journal 46.1 (2013): 19–35. Web.

Watkins, Ralph. “‘It Was Like I Was the Woman and She Was the Man’: Boundaries, Portals, and Pollution in ‘Light in August.’” The Southern literary journal 26.2 (1994): 11–24. Print.

MEDORO, DANA. “‘Between Two Moons Balanced’: Menstruation and Narrative in ‘The Sound and the Fury.’” Mosaic (Winnipeg) 33.4 (2000): 91–114. Print.

BLAINE, DIANA. “The Abjection of Addie and Other Myths of the Maternal in ‘As I Lay Dying.’” The Mississippi quarterly 47.3 (1994): 419–439. Print.

Ladd, Barbara. Resisting History : Gender, Modernity, and Authorship in William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora Welty . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. Print.

1. Matthews, John. William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South. 1. Aufl. Chichester, U.K. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
2. Aboul-Ela, Hosam M. “Faulkner and the Third World: The Contemporary Politics of Perspective.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2010, pp. 89–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41949676.
3. Ladd, Barbara. “Reconsidering Tradition.” The Southern literary journal 42.1 (2009): 129–133. Web.
4. King, Richard H., and Robert H. Brinkmeyer. “Allegories of Imperialism: Globalizing Southern Studies.” American Literary History, vol. 23, no. 1, 2011, pp. 148–158. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41237428.
5. Forter, Greg. Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism. Cambridge ;: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
6. Abadie, Ann J., and Annette Trefzer. Global Faulkner. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print.
7. Gandal, Keith. The Gun and the Pen : Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the Fiction of Mobilization . New York ;: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Our class Zotero database ended up being a perfect place to find books / articles, since it includes a lot of sources that touch on both modernism and Southern identity. I can tell that Matthew’s work will definitely be important in my project. I also ended up being exposed to a whole new area of Faulkner studies that I hadn’t really paid much attention to, which is the way in which Faulkner’s work seems to share similarities with global Japanese, South-Asian, third world writers, and etc. It’s a bit confusing because I do like the research question how does Faulkner represent the ‘New South’ in his interwar novels?, but I’m thinking that there’s maybe some way of including these global parallels in my project? Or maybe the smart thing would be to shift my project completely. For example: I’m really interested in how similar TSAF is to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, in terms of themes of social uncertainty, incest, etc. I actually included an article that touches on that idea (there aren’t many). So basically, my sources kind of bridge on two different topics at the moment (‘The New South’ and Global Studies).