Front cover image for Faulkner's questioning narratives : fiction of his major phase, 1929-42

Faulkner's questioning narratives : fiction of his major phase, 1929-42

"Focusing on the core novels, including The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom!, Sanctuary, Light in August, and Go Down, Moses, David Minter illuminates the intriguing workings of William Faulkner's mature fiction: the tensions at play within the fiction and the creativity not only exhibited by the author but also extended to his characters and required of his readers." "Faulkner's achievement, Minter contends, was in combining daring experiments in form with searching examinations of grave social, political, and moral problems. His novels change and expand the role of the reader by means of proliferating narratives that lead to questions rather than answers and to approximation rather than resolution. As his characters remember, talk about, and reconstruct their own sometimes conflicting histories, Faulkner extends to the reader the possibility of creatively revising and completing his narratives. Minter shows how this process at times implicates the reader in the corruption and violence of the story, as when the reader is required to fill in - out of his or her own experience - the crucial gaps left in the narrative of Sanctuary."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2004
1st pbk. ed View all formats and editions
University of Illinois Press, Urbana, ©2004
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xiv, 166 pages ; 24 cm
9780252071935, 9780252026645, 025207193X, 0252026640
54112325
The force of Faulkner's fiction : an introduction
"Carcassonne," "Wash," and the voices of Faulkner's fiction
Faulkner, childhood, and the making of The sound and the fury : love, death, and the novel
"Truths more intense than knowledge" : notes on Faulkner and creativity
Family, region, and myth in Faulkner's fiction
A brief encounter with the stories and tensions that define Light in August
"Monk" as a guide to one aspect of the enduring force of Absalom, Absalom!
"Shapes of ceremonial mortality" : an encounter with the aggressive violence of Sanctuary
The strange double-edged gift of Faulkner's fiction
Faulkner's imagination and the logic of reiteration : the case of "The old people"
In lieu of conclusion : the voices of Faulkner's fiction
evocation, celebration, and revision