Uzbek state world languages university

WILLIAM FAULKNER (1897-1962)

William Faulkner was born in New Albany in the family of impoverished aristocrats. He grew up in Oxford, Mississippi. After education he joined the Royal Canadian Flying Corps and was sent to France, where he was wounded in an air crash during a training flight. In 1918 he returned home. After a short stay in Oxford he went to New Orleans where Faulkner published his first book – a book pf poems “The Marble Faun” 1924 and his war novels “Soldier’s Pay” 1926

(Солдатская награда) and “Mosquitoes” 1927. By the end of the 1920’s Faulkner went back to Mississippi and spent the rest of his life in Oxford which became the background for most of his books under the name of Jefferson.
The war topic is the central factor of Faulkner’s interest in the 1920’s but for a short period of time. Very soon he passes on to the description of his native South and issues a series of books dealing with the history of the city of Jefferson. These books reflect his hatred of contemporary life and a kind of certain sympathy for the patriarchal way of life in the South. But for all his attachment to the past he concentrated upon the decadence of the families representing the old southern nobility. In “Sartoris” 1929, the first of the novels of this series Faulkner shows the decay of a family of old southern aristocrats, while in the novel “The Sound

and the Fury” (Шум и ярость), published in the same year, he mercilessly exposes the moral and mental degradation of another southern family.

The subsequent list of Faulkner’s works comprises “As I Lay Dying” 1930, (На смертном одре), “Sanctuary” 1931, (Святилище), “Light in August” 1932, “Absalom, Absalom!” 1936. The end of the 1930’s witnesses the beginning of a

change in the outlook of Faulkner. His opposition to monopolistic capital becomes more pronounced and his main concern now is the policy of money-grubbing that dominates the life of American society.

Faulkner’s books of the later period rank him among the great realists of modern America. In 1940 he writes “The Hamlet” (Деревушка), which opens a trilogy, subsequent parts of which are “The Town” 1957 and “The Mansion” 1959. These books deal with the life of the family of the Snopeses, former poor whites whom cunning, corruption and unscrupulousness elevated to a ruling financial oligarchy.
In “Go Down, Moses” 1942, (Сойди, Моисей), a book of stories, in the novel “Intruder in the Dust” 1948, (Осквернитель праха), Faulkner denounced racialism in the South. These books were followed by two volumes of short stories. In 1954 he published “A Fable”, a novel dedicated to WWI, where he voiced his protest against all kinds of military activities.
In 1950 William Faulkner got the Nobel Prize for literature.