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CONTENT
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………..3
I CHAPTER WILLIAM FAULKNER, THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS WRITER AND NOBEL LAUREATE
1.1 William Faulkner’s biography………………………………………... 5
1.2 His writing style, awards and collections……………….…14
II CHAPTER THE NOVELS AND WORKS THAT MADE WILLIAM FAULKNER WORLD FAMOUS("THE SOUND AND THE FURY", "LIGHT AUGUST", "THE BEAR")
2.1 The main content and plot summary of the novels … .21
2.2 Analysis of William Faulkner’s novels……………………………………..….. 30
CONCLUSION………………………………………………..………34
REFERENCES………………………………………………..…….....37
INTRODUCTION
War. Incest. Racism. Necrophilia. Mental illness. Suicide. In his collection of books, short stories, and poems, William Faulkner tackled nearly every aspect of life—from the mundane to the sensational—in the American South. One of the most highly regarded novelists of the twentieth century, Faulkner was a brilliant, innovative, and notably eccentric man with a taste for whiskey (Faulkner began to drink heavily at the age of seventeen) and fragmented narratives. Throughout his life, Faulkner was something of a misfit, notorious for his haughtiness and his tendency to invent stories about himself.
In his writing career, however, Faulkner's unorthodoxy led to great success: by pioneering new techniques in form and style, Faulkner helped revolutionize the notion of the "narrative" and, in the process, produced some of the greatest works of American literature. His story is all the more compelling considering that he never even graduated from high school! Although Faulkner received many awards and accolades, he lived most of his life in obscurity; he was not regarded as an author of any real importance until he was nearly fifty years old. In addition, his personal life was a mess—he continually struggled with alcoholism, debt, and repeated bouts of infidelity. The story of William Faulkner's life is thus a tale of perseverance, failure, creativity, and success.
In his work, William Faulkner created some of the most enduring and detailed portraits of life in the American South. His novels, which explore family dynamics, race, gender, and social class, have riveted—and challenged—readers for over sixty years with their iconic characters, intricate plotlines, and myriad shifts in time. Some of the greatest authors of the twentieth century, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Joyce Carol Oates, Albert Camus, Jose Luis Borges, Toni Morrison, and Cormac McCarthy, cite Faulkner as a major influence on their work. If you've ever read a book that doesn't move from point A to point B but, instead, from point A to point Z to point T and back, you should keep reading. Faulkner is one of the guys who did it first.
Although several versions of "The Bear" exist, the one most commonly read comes from William Faulkner's 1942 novel, Go Down, Moses. Isaac (Ike) McCaslin, the young hero of "The Bear," remains a central figure throughout the novel as well. The story of a young man's development against a background of vanishing wilderness was well received by readers and critics alike. Today it appears in many anthologies. Faulkner did not add the long fourth section of the story until it appeared in Go Down, Moses, and he argued that its primary role was to connect the story to the rest of the novel. If read alone, the fourth section of "The Bear" should be omitted. Yet the fourth section puts into context the relationships and events that contnbuted to young Ike's upbringing in the woods. It is learned that Major deSpain and Colonel Compson received their commissions in the Civil War, an historical event of resounding importance In addition, Ike's decisions in the fourth section are primarily due to the lessons he has learned in the wilderness. Thus the fourth section shows how he translates the morality of the woods into social responsibility. Whether read alone or as part of the longer novel in which it eventually appeared,' "The Bear" provides a unique glimpse into the Mississippi region where Faulkner, himself an avid hunter, was born and raised. As Ike McCaslin learns about his family's past, Faulkner portrays a varied cast of characters in a tale about the wilderness destroyed by human greed, and a man who refuses to further this destructive trend.
Published in 1932, William Faulkner's Light in August chronicles the life and death of Joe Christmas, a man of ambiguous racial ancestry. Like The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom, and As I Lay Dying, Light in August takes place in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County (say that five times fast). The so-called Yoknapatawpha novels are linked by their shared location, but they're also linked by certain themes and concerns, such as the legacy of slavery, the persistence of memory, and the South's struggle to come to terms with its defeat in the Civil War, among others.
Light in August was published after Faulkner gained a wide readership 1931, when he published Sanctuary. Sanctuary is a potboiler of a novel, one with lots of alcohol and sex and violence. Once Sanctuary made it big, folks started realizing that Faulkner's other work was actually technically (and emotionally) brilliant. His work was so brilliant, in fact, that the good folks at the Nobel Foundation awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949.
While William Faulkner's complex novels drew mixed critical responses in the 1930s, two events in the 1940s helped inspire a fresh look at his work and a subsequent reevaluation of his literary talent: the appearance of Malcolm Cowley's edition of The Portable Faulkner in 1946, which included Cowley's astute analysis of Faulkner's work, and the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 to Faulkner, followed by his stirring acceptance speech. As of 2006, more scholarly work was being done on Faulkner than on any other American author, which attests to his work's relevance to modern readers. In the early 2000s, he was considered one of America's finest authors.
Light in August, published in 1932, is one of his most highly acclaimed works. The novel traces the experiences of three main characters: Lena Grove, who is searching for the father of her unborn child; Gail Hightower, an elderly minister who seeks a measure of peace in his troubled existence; and Joe Christmas, who spends his life struggling to deal with his belief that he is part black. As Faulkner weaves together the stories of these three characters, he explores the devastating effects of racism and religious fanaticism. Inevitably, however, the novel's tragic elements are juxtaposed with resilience and optimism, especially in its closing pages. Light in August thus becomes an apt illustration of this famous passage from Faulkner's Nobel Prize address: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
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