Overview

"William Faulkner and Mortality is the first full-length study of mortality in William Faulkner’s fiction. The book challenges earlier, influential scholarly considerations of death in Faulkner’s work that claimed that writing was his authorial method of ‘saying No to death’. Through close-readings of six key works – The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, ""A Rose for Emily"", Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses – this book examines how Faulkner’s characters confront various experiences of human mortality, including grief, bereavement, mourning, and violence. The trauma and ambivalence caused by these experiences ultimately compel these characters to ‘say Yes to death’. The book makes a clear distinction between Faulkner’s quest for literary immortality through writing and the desire for death exhibited by the principal characters in the works analysed. William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound offers a new paradigm for reading Faulkner’s oeuvre, and adds an alternative voice to a debate within Faulkner scholarship long thought to have ended."

Full Product Details

Author:   Ahmed Honeini
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.358kg
ISBN:  

9780367501358

ISBN 10:   036750135
Pages:   184
Publication Date:   09 January 2023
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction: Saying No to Death? William Faulkner’s aesthetic of mortality Saying Yes to death in Faulkner’s fiction The literary tradition of immortality and the modern denial of death I listen to the voices Chapter 1: A fine dead sound: Quentin Compson’s suicide in The Sound and the Fury June Second, 1910: Morning – An affectless voice The word that Quentin cannot say Little Sister death June Second, 1910: Night – A fine dead sound Coda: Three reactions to Quentin’s suicide Chapter 2: Living was terrible: Confrontations with mortality in As I Lay Dying Getting ready to stay dead A shoddy job A wet seed in the hot blind earth My mother is a fish That goddamn box I have no mother Now I can get them teeth Chapter 3: Burying the fallen monument: The death of the Old South in ""A Rose for Emily"" A fallen monument to the Old South A body submerged in water I want some poison A strand of iron-gray hair Emily’s rose for the narrator Chapter 4: A bloody mischancing of human affairs: Murder and violence in Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! The rootless stranger: Alienation and racial exclusion in Light in August Something is going to happen to me: The murder of Joe Christmas An act of passion and violence: The legend of Thomas Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom! I’m going to tech you, Kernel: Wash Jones’s tragic design Chapter 5: Ah’m goan home: Narration, homegoing, and whiteness in Go Down, Moses Faulkner’s narrational distance Homegoing and the subversion of African American funerary culture Come home, whar we can help you Ah’m snakebit and bound to die Black bereavement through the lens of whiteness She just wanted him home Conclusion: Breaking the pencil: Death and voice in Faulkner’s fiction"

Reviews

This volume brings a valuable contribution to Faulknerian criticism, a noteworthy achievement for an author on whom so much has been written. Honeini's prose is clear, and the arguments put forward are utterly convincing and perspicuous. -- Solveig Dunkel (University of Picardy-Jules Verne), in Transatlantica: American Studies Journal, 2021 (Volume 2) This volume brings a valuable contribution to Faulknerian criticism, a noteworthy achievement for an author on whom so much has been written. Honeini's prose is clear, and the arguments put forward are utterly convincing and perspicuous. -- Solveig Dunkel (University of Picardy-Jules Verne), in Transatlantica: American Studies Journal, 2021 (Volume 2) William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound is a key work for any scholars looking at the author's mediations on loss, life, grief, and more broadly, gendered life in the American South. -- Katie Anne Tobin (University of Durham), United States Studies Online

Author Information

Ahmed Honeini teaches in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He earned his PhD from Royal Holloway on the work of William Faulkner in 2018, and he was previously educated at King’s College London and University College London. He has published with the Mississippi Quarterly and United States Studies Online. He has also been awarded various research grants, including from the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), the Hemingway Society, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Finally, he is the founding director of the Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network (@Faulkner_UK on Twitter). His main research interests are Faulkner, literary modernism, and American fiction, theatre, and film.

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