This thesis examines the genesis, maintenance, and failure of rigid and exclusionary societal models present in William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Yi- Fu Tuan's analysis of the concepts space and place serves as the foundational theoretical framework by which human spatiality may be interpreted. Combining Tuan's observations and architectural analysis with Edouard Glissant's concepts of atavistic and composite societal models allows for a much broader consideration of various political ideologies present in the South. Following this, it becomes necessary to apply a postcolonial lens to areas of Faulkner's literature to examine how these societal models are upheld and the effects they have on characters in both Reconstruction and post- Reconstruction eras. Within Absalom, Absalom! and The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner showcases an aspect of southern history that allowed this societal model to flourish, how this model affected those trapped within it, and its ultimate failure for future generations. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis clarifies recent debates on the problems of territorialized freedom in the Atlantic world by examining several extradition cases involving runaway slaves in Canada, where southern slaveholders attempted to retrieve their lost property by relabeling fugitive slaves as fugitive criminals. In order to combat these efforts and receive the full protections of British subjecthood, self-emancipated people realized that they needed to prove themselves worthy of this status. To achieve this, black refugees formulated their own language of subjecthood predicated upon economic productivity, social respectability, and political loyalty. By actively working to incorporate themselves into the British Empire, Afro-Canadians redefined subjecthood from a status largely seen as a passively received birthright to a deliberate choice. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates that ways in which formerly enslaved people laid out their own terms for imperial inclusion and defined the contours of black social and legal belonging in a partially free Atlantic world. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection