The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) To establish William Faulkner's informal theory by comparing interview statements which he made on the subject of dialect with Sumner Ives's formal theory and (2) To uncover broad patterns in Faulkner's use of dialect markers from the beginning to the end of his literary career by making a rigorous statistical analysis of his use of dialect markers in eight Yoknapatawpba County novels written between the beginning and the end of his career.Chapter 1 is an introduction to the study. Chapter 2 contains a review of literature in the field of dialect study in recent years and examines the main relationships between those studies and this one. Chapter 3 discusses the basic principles of Sumner Ives's formal dialect theory, particularly as they may be- applied to William Faulkner's use of dialect. Chapter 4 compares Faulkner's informal dialect theory, as it was expressed in various interview statements which he made on the subject of dialect, with Ives's formal theory. Chapter 5 describes the data gathering procedures for the statistical analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers, and Chapter 6 gives the results of the analysis. Chapter 7 presents the conclusions for the entire study.The comparison of William.Faulkner's informal dialect theory and Sumner Ives's formal one reveals that they were, in their broad outlines, essentially the same.For the purpose of analyzing Faulkner's use of dialect markers, his works were divided into three periods-early, middle, and late--with the following novels selected for analysis in these periods: early, Sartoris (1929) and The Sound and the Fury (1929); middle, Light in August (1932), The Unvanquished (1938), and The Hamlet (1940) ; and late, Intruder in the Dust (1948), The Town (1957), and The Reivers (1962). In all 3,7144 dialogue passages were analyzed in the eight novels; these dialogue passages contained 83,619 words.Also for purposes of analysis, a dialect marker was defined as either a phonological spelling or a nonstandard grammatical construction. The statistical analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers was an analysis of variance involving seven independent variables and six dependent variables. The independent' variables were the numerical order in which the novels analyzed were published and the numerical order of the literary period in which they were grouped with other novels in the study and the age, sex, class, race, and location of the characters who spoke the dialogue analyzed. The dependent variables were the percentages of words used as dialect markers per utterance under the categories 'total', 'verbs or auxiliaries', 'nouns', 'adjectives or adverbs', 'pronouns or demonstratives', and 'others'.The analysis of Faulkner's use of dialect markers revealed that he made significant change in that use from the beginning to the middle, but not from the middle to the end of his career. It showed that the greatest part of that change was a decrease in marker use by lower class characters rather than middle or upper class characters and by black characters rather than white characters. It also showed significant change on a sex basis with a larger decrease for male than female characters and a significant difference on an age basis with children and old adults using higherpercentages of their words as dialect markers than young middle aged adults. On a parts of speech basis, the analysis indicated that Faulkner's most frequently used and most consistently used dialect marker was the verb.

This thesis considers the treatment of early twentieth-century intersex bodies in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!. It takes into special account the prevalence of eugenic discourse during the modernist period, noticing eugenicists’ interest in categorical imperatives for the purposes of statistical analysis and surgical alteration. Their aims were human perfectibility. This thesis argues Orlando and Absalom, Absalom! imagine bodies existing, loving, and dreaming in between male and female, and outside of the violence of surgical “correction.”

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Thomas L. McHaney, committee chair; Nancy Chase, Marti Singer, committee members. Electronic text (175 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed November 6, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 161-175).

Thesis (M.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1992. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2835. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [107]-110).

Thesis--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [535]-544). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 31-33)

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the importance of Go Down, Moses in the working out of Faulkner's moral vision. By and large, critics have considered this book to be a central or pivotal work in this process, seeing Ike McCaslin's renunciation as a meaningful response to the curses of slavery and miscegenation which have beset the South for so many generations. Furthermore, some of them point out that Ike's initiation into the primitive simplicity of the wilderness world of Sam Fathers represents a solution for modern man in his own troubled world: somehow to effect a reversion to a simpler world with its concomitant virtues of innocence, humility, and self-sufficiency. On the whole, these critics have concentrated mainly on "The Bear" section of Go Down, Moses, and to a lesser extent on "Delta Autumn" and "The Old People," the three stories in which Ike directly appears. Consequently, their conclusions about Faulkner's moral vision stem almost entirely from their interpretation of Ike's responses to his two legacies, the wilderness world and the plantation world, with relatively little attention being paid to the responses of the other inheritors of the McCaslin curse. Thus, Go Down, Moses as a thematically unified work has been largely neglected, and the experiences of Ike McCaslin have been emphasized at the expense of those of the other inhabitants of the plantation world. This thesis will pursue the argument that the above interpretation is misleading on several counts, and hence that it is necessary to see the centrality of Go Down, Moses in a different perspective. First of all, by examining the nature of the plantation world, we will see that what Ike really repudiated was not just a legal inheritance, but a very real world in which the constituents of a full and meaningful life were everywhere evident. Secondly, it becomes evident in the analysis of Ike’s renunciation that his decision meant in effect that he was abdicating his responsibility for developing sound moral and ethical relationships within the world he was born into, and that his obsession with the values of the wilderness world represented living in terms of ritual rather than of reality. In the third place, the responses of the other inhabitants of the plantation world reflect a far more meaningful grasp of both the past and the present than does Ike, and in the perspective of these people, he suffers a significantly reduced stature. It becomes clear, then, that Faulkner uses Ike's responses to illustrate the futility of the static idealist rather than the sacrifice of a dedicated and determined reformer. And finally, the evidence in such later novels as Intruder in the Dust, A Fable, and The Reivers, as well as in Faulkner's own public utterances in the Nobel Prize Speech, at the University of Virginia, and at Nagano, indicates clearly how far man must progress beyond the idealism of the Ike McCaslins of the world in order to make an effective contribution to the moral and ethical status of his society. This thesis does not dispute the fact that "The Bear" is the key work in Go Down, Moses, nor that Ike is a central figure, but it does maintain that their significance can be, determined only by a close examination of the work as a whole. Such an examination will clearly reveal Faulkner's larger concern: that man must respond to his world as he finds it, whether that world is the wilderness, the plantation, or the modern world, and that the decisions he makes must be based on the realities of the world he has inherited. Within this perspective, it is evident that the responses of the Edmondses, the Beauchamps, and the miscellaneous inhabitants of the McCaslin plantation world must be carefully analyzed, for only against the tangible exigencies of the day-to-day lives of these people can the actions of Ike be properly assessed. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The purpose of this paper is to view Faulkner's use of history from a different perspective by examining in detail the myths and historical facts with which Faulkner dealt. First, several of the prevailing myths about the Old South and the Civil War will be examined. Second, the actual historical facts will be compared and contrasted with legendary tradition. Third, and most important, several of Faulkner's works will be examined to show how he uses both the myths and historical facts to create his own "legend" of the South. Finally, Faulkner's view of the New South will be examined.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore William Faulkner’s paradoxical modernist aesthetic. While his writings evince primal, earthy, and post-Civil War angst-ridden qualities, Faulkner’s narratives are also found to be hyper-postmodern. Using Jacques Derrida’s theories on the absent-present trace, I will show how certain micromoments in three of Faulkner’s texts showcase the “trace” forming a pathway to the inaccessible and unattainable sublime. I will use “trace” and general theories of the “sublime” as methodological tools to explore Faulkner’s narrative of pastoral loss, the cultural institutionalization of racial differences, as well as structures of mourning/melancholia that lead to the disruption of the pathway between trace and sublime. The imagery/narrative palpability, manifested through Faulkner’s pictorial imagination, brings Derridean theory to earth, yet meanwhile transcends any theoretical or conceptual methodology. The three micromoments will reveal ruptures (irreconcilable meanings) at work in the margins of these texts.