Historicity And Reality

Being a modernist mythical world, the core of Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha is the deifications of nobles and tradition. Yoknapatawpha is also a pluralistic world, there are historical and realistic themes in Faulkner's poor whites subject novels as well.In As I Lay Dying, Faulkner metaphorically reveals that the old southern nobles' influence on the poor whites is withering away, and that the nobles stratum is inevitably stepping down from the stage of history. At the same tune, he indicates the people of lower strata's possibility of reconstructing a new social order through their endurance and action abilities. In Light in August and The Hamlet, this theme is carried on and developed: through their rebirth in the novel, Light in August indicates the development of poor whites after the American Civil War; while by the rise of the Snopes family who derive themselves from poor whites, The Hamlet reveals the ending of the old time. The subjects of the three novels mentioned above are both independent and related to one another, which give entire accounts of the poor whites' development after the war. Compared with Faulkner's nobles subject stories which bear more mythical color, this artistic description is closer to real history, and involves strong historicity.From Light in August, Faulkner discusses the chronic maladies puzzling the South, such as racialism, Puritanism and tradition burden. In The Hamlet, he broadly touches upon the social, economical and political problems for the first time, the modern capitalists who are represented by the Snopes family in this novel are criticized as well. Generally speaking, Faulkner pays more attention to realistic problems in the poor whites subject novels than in the nobles subject ones.The reality and historicity involved in the poor whites subject novels disintegrate the myth of the nobles, and to some extent influence Faulkner's later creation of the nobles subject novels. The historical and realistic themes constitute the self-critical motive power inside Yoknapatawpha, and make Faulkner's creation epical portrayal of the 20th-century people's existence state. This epic transcends the modernism, and indicates a variety of aesthetic characteristics with the combination of both traditional and modern form of expression as well as deep ideological content.