The Historical Context And The Textual Representation

William Faulkner (1897-1962), regarded as the most typical representative writer of "The Southern Renaissance" in America, also called the flag-bearer of "The Southern Renaissance", is one of the greatest literary writer in American history of literature and a giant in the world literature arena, who kept writing for nearly four decades and produced many a classic and influential literary works, winning a large readership worldwide. His literary achivements are fabulous and extraordinary. In his literary works, he created his own literary realm, Yokanapatawpha, an imaginary county he built after Lafayete, his hometown, which displayed a magnificent view of the American South, with a very strong feature of the southern area. Faulkner depicted what happened in his hometown, his "postages tamp", to show the whole view of the society, including the movement of social strata and the reaction of common people during the social and cultural transmission period of the American South. And in his literary writing, he inherited the great tradition of the Southern Literature and at the same time adopted a great variety of modern narrative techniques in literature such as multiple point of view and a circular form, symbolic metaphor and contrapuntal type structure. Besides, he used the detailed psychological description to portray the characters vividly from all the social classes in the south in his novels, with which he showed the good and the bad of all human beings metaphorically. His works are filled with much cultural connotation and aesthetic tastes as a result of his echo to the cultural context of the era he was living in, and his experimental writing style, and finally he was listed among the most typical modem literary writers in the west.In the past five decades, his novels brought influential impact on the world literature with their profound meanings and wide scope of topics, as a result of which he was imitated by the writers in many countries and also became the focus in the field of literary criticism in a lot of countries. Many literary theories have been applied in scrutinizing Faulkner’s novels and many literary critics associated the features of people in the novels with the historical context, which to a great exten has added new achievements in Faulknerian studies from the perpective of cultural study. Thus, this dissertation will, on the basis of associating the main novels of Faulkner and the specific cultural and historical context of the time they were in, make a comprehensive investigation into how Faulkner imaginatively represented the historical context in his own literary writing, intend to figure out the relationship between Faulkner’s main literary works and the time they were produced. In the research practice, the dissertation will attach the special importance to the historical context in which Faulkner created his novels, that is, the social transiting period of the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in the American South during the first half of twentieth century, explore the representative works in Faulkner’s different writing periods as a whole in the context of the social transiting period of the American South. In addition, this dissertation will interpret the texts and Faulkner’s writing aesthetics from the perspectives of the theories of cultural criticism.The body of this dissertation is composed of five parts. The first part is Chapter one, an introduction which starts from a brief introduction to Faulkner and the time he was living in. What comes next is tracing the evolvement of the study on Faulkner and his literary works home and abroad, sorting the results of studies on the author and his works in the past five decades, and accomplishing the literature review of the research and the sketch of the works, from which the significance of this dissertation is derived.The second part is Chapter Two "The Historical Context in the American South and Faulkner’s Literary Writing", mainly presenting the connection between Faulkner’s literary writing and the historical and social context in the South generally, a basis for the study in the following chapters. This part can be further divided into two sections, the first of which deals with the social changes in the historical context from the American Civil War to the1960s, and the second of which is about Faulkner’s literary writing in different periods. To begin with, Chapter Two first introduces the huge social changes that took place in America during the time when Faulkner was living. America accomplished the national unification from a separated country into a united one and the transition from an agricultural society to an industrialized and commercialized society. The Second Industrial Revolution happened in the late of nineteenth century, bringing about huge impact on the south. The industries in the south witnessed an enormous development, the network of railway rendered the connection closer than before between towns and people of different places and eventually towns became the regional center of economy, culture and politics. At the same time, the traditional agricultural society in the south was heavily struck by the industrial revolution and people’s way of consumption and everyday life began to change fundamentally. In addition to these huge changes, the influential historical events also happened during this period, two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Progressive Movement and the Civil Rights Movement by black people. Then, Faulkner’s literary writing is divided into three phases, early writing phase of1920-1929, the gold age phase of1929-1949and the later period writing phase since1949. Each writing phase was connected with its specific social context and cultural reality, which form a perfect foundation for the summary of Faulkner’s writing in the three phases correspondingly. Finally, the clear association between the works and their specific social context and cultural reality can be seen.Chapter Three "Emily Grierson and Gavin Stevens:the Characters’ Representation in Faulkner’s Literary Texts", analyses the features of the characters in Faulkner’s novels, including Emily in A Rose for Emily Grierson, and Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust, with the aid of the concept "identity" in sociology. These two figures in fact symbolize the decline and decay of the old southern aristocracy and the emergence of the new middle class in the south respectively, definitely exemplifying the close connection between the identity of characters and the special historical context they were in. The depravation of the old aristocrat lady Emily and Gavin’s worshipping the chivalry and resistance against the industrial and commercial culture, are working together to illustrate the typical features of their identiy as a mirror to reflect the characteristics of people of different classes in the cultrual and historical context of social transmission from the end of American Civil War to]960s.The fourth part, Chapter Four "The Transition of Agricultural Civilization to the Industrial and Commercial Civilization:the Cultural Representation of Faulkner’s Literary Texts", is the third part of the body section, focusing on investigating how Faulkner displayed the cultural changes during the social transiting period of the south from the end of American Civil War to1960s in his novel writing from the following three aspects:"the Varnishing Agricultural Civilization","the Rise of Consumption Culture" and "the Criticism on the Industrial and Commercial Civilization". The description of varied changes of geographical setting of the south in the texts by Faulkner was actually a vivid record of the process of agricultural mechanization that happened from the end of nineteenth century to the beginning of twentieth century in America, and furthermore a significant reflection of the prominent characteristics of the south in its social transiting period from agricultural civilization to the industrial civilization. Such a process shows the significant features of the agriculture and the influence of industrialization on agriculture during the transiting period. Another important aspect of Faulkner’s writing is his representation of consumption of commodities as an evidence of the invasion of modem industrial and commercial civilization into the traditional agricultural civilization and the changes of people’s way of everyday life and their habit of daily consumption. Faulkner in his writing continued the traditional wasteland writing. His writing exposed his critical point of view on the modern industrial and commercial civilization. All in all, Faulkner’s writing of the cultural changes from different facets exposed the cultural structure of the social transiting period metaphorically, suggesting his complicated views on these inevitable social and cultural changes.Part five is Chapter Five "The Countryside and the Town:the Representation of Social Strata in Faulkner’s Literary Texts", which, making good use of the theories of moerdn sociology, mainly deals with the characters of the classes in the southern society depicted in Faulkner’s novels. Faulkner, setting the background for several of his novels in the remote countryside in the south or an urbanizing town, portrayed different social classes in the countryside and town under the stroke of the industrial civilization and culture, and then pictured the life and spirit of the different social classes in the social transiting period in the American South. To be specific, his writing of the countryside, such as A Hundred Acre of Sutburn, McCaslin Manor, the Old Frenchmen Place and Jefferson Town showed the changes and reconstruction of social classes in the southern countryside in the first half of the twentieth century while the writing of towns which takes Jefferson town as an instance exhibited the changes in social classes in the southern towns in that specific historical context. In his novels, Faulkner, by shaping the representative countryside and town in the transitional time of the south, A Hundred Acre of Sutburn, the Old Frenchmen Place and Jefferson town for instance, made them a medium for people to know and understand the changes in the social classes in the south and their psychological identity and motives as well.The conclusion is naturally the last part of this dissertation. Faulkner started his writing career in a very real sense after the First World War. After more than four decaes of writing, he passed away in1962. The time Faulkner lived was not peaceful during which there were too many momentous historical events. Any writer cannot escape the powerful influence that his time and living environment leave on him and Faulkner is no exception. So his writing is no doubt closely related to the time when he lived. His works artistically reproduced the cultural changes that happened in the social transitting period of the American South, recorded the vicissitudes of the landscape physically and the movement of social classes and also built different images in the special transforming periods. Faulkner manipulated many a modern narrative technique to represent what happened in this great historical context in his novels. Only by putting his works in the periods of the American South can researchers and readers gain a thorough interpretation of Faulkner’s works culturally and politically.