Faulkner's novels written after he won the Nobel Prize are generally regarded to be simply lesser post-scripts to his major works. This study suggests, to the contrary, that while the novels are quite different from Faulkner's masterpieces, they represent a unique matching of literary technique and theme. / The preface establishes the context for Faulkner's work, suggesting that he, along with other writers of the period, responded to changing global realities, especially the growing power of the government and the loss of individual freedoms after World War II. Chapter I analyzes Faulkner's essays, speeches and letters to shed light on his growing personal conflict over the racial situation in the United States during the period in which he wrote The Town and The Mansion. He felt, and said repeatedly, that a racist, segregated society was wrong and indefensible from a moral point of view. He also felt, however, that practical considerations made it impossible to choose immediately to follow the correct moral path. In his last three novels, Faulkner does not directly deal with the issue of Black/White relations, but does examine the difficulty of reconciling moral truths with real-world truths. In The Hamlet people had existed in a world of myth and tradition with little in the way of systematized rules of behavior. In The Town, the characters arrive in a modern world in which the rules of behavior are becoming more codified; and therefore, the conflict between morality and practicality is dramatically more obvious. The community, nevertheless, is still able to accept two interpretations of a situation, one moral and the other practical, and ignore the paradox. And finally, in The Mansion, the modern world is supreme, sociology has replaced mythology, and the alienated "poor-sons-of-bitches" are destined simply to exist, not to prevail. In The Reivers Faulkner brings us back to the beginning of the end, The Town, to show us characters once again who not only realize that morality and practicality frequently present quite different patterns of behavior, but they also see that dichotomy as desirable and the acceptance of it as the key to adulthood. It is that understanding that Lucius offers his grandson and that Faulkner offers his reader. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-03, Section: A, page: 0507. / Major Professor: Elisabeth Muhlenfeld. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76240 |
| Contributors | Wisdom, Joe Craig., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 178 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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