Drawing on recent advances in shame studies, this dissertation uncovers and interrogates the important role of shame as a psychodynamic and social force in the works and lives of William Faulkner and Willa Cather. After extended discussions of Faulkner's Sanctuary and Light in August and Cather's The Song of the Lark and One of Ours, the final chapter presents a new theory of the common affective causes and consequences of Faulkner's and Cather's very different literary aesthetics. |