Faulkner and the Politics of Reading

Karl F. Zender, Scott Romine

$48.95 $41.82

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English

Louisiana State University Press
18 October 2023

Literature: history & criticism; Literary theory; Semiotics & semiology

Series: Southern Literary Studies

With this study Karl F. Zender offers fresh readings of individual novels, themes, and motifs while also assessing the impact of recent politicized interpretations on our understanding of Faulkner's achievement. Sympathetically acknowledging the need to decenter the canon, Zender's searching interrogation of current theory clears a breathing space for Faulkner and his readers between the fustier remnants of New Criticism and the excesses of post-structuralism.

Each chapter opens with a balanced presentation of the genuine gifts contemporary theory has bestowed on our comprehension of a particular novel or problem in Faulkner criticism and then proceeds with a groundbreaking reading. ""The Politics of Incest"" challenges older psychoanalytic interpretations of Faulkner's use of the incest motif, and ""Faulkner's Privacy"" defends the novelist's difficulty or ""reticence"" as an aesthetic resistance against the rude candor of deregionalized and depersonalized culture. Subsequent chapters take up the volatile issues of Faulkner's representations of women and of African Americans, and a close reading of the classic ""Barn Burning"" critiques the current tendency to blur the concepts of patriarchy and paternity.

The elegiac final chapter, ""Where is Yoknapatawpha County?"" draws on a comparison with John Updike's Pennsylvania fiction and a reading of Joan Williams's The Wintering to explore Faulkner's disinclination to represent the quotidian realities of southern life in his later novels. Zender shows that Faulkner's stylistic withdrawal attempts to ""transform into beauty"" his alienation from the postwar world and his fear of aging. That Faulkner and the Politics of Reading itself recovers and gives new luster to Faulkner's beauty will surely please, in the author's words, ""those readers . . . for whom literature is less a mechanism of social change than a source of pleasure."" The originality of its critical vision will inspire Faulkner scholars, students of American literature, and general readers.

By: Karl F. Zender
Series edited by: Scott Romine
Imprint: Louisiana State University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm,
Weight: 272g
ISBN: 9780807180440
ISBN 10: 0807180440
Series: Southern Literary Studies
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 18 October 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Karl F. Zender is professor of English emeritus at the University of California, Davis. His books include The Crossing of the Ways: William Faulkner, the South, and the Modern World; Shakespeare, Midlife, and Generativity; and Shakespeare and Faulkner: Selves and Others.

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Faulkner and the Politics of Reading

Karl F. Zender, Scott Romine

$48.95 $41.82

Paperback

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