University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words

book
posted on 2023-06-08, 04:50 authored by Richard Godden
In William Faulkner, Richard Godden traces how the novelist's late fiction echoes the economic and racial traumas of the South's delayed modernization in the mid-twentieth century. As the New Deal rapidly accelerated the long-term shift from tenant farming to modern agriculture, many African Americans were driven from the land and forced to migrate north. At the same time, white landowners exchanged dependency on black labor for dependency on northern capital. Combining powerful close readings of The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses, and A Fable with an examination of southern economic history from the 1930s to the 1950s, Godden shows how the novels' literary complexities--from their narrative structures down to their smallest verbal emphases--reflect and refract the period's economic complexities. By demonstrating the interrelation of literary forms and economic systems, the book describes, in effect, the poetics of an economy.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Pages

264.0

ISBN

9780691130712

Department affiliated with

  • American Studies Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2012-05-31

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC