| William Faulkner is a novelist with noble sense of social responsibility. Deeply rooted in the American southern society, he paid much attention to people’s psychological changes posed by social vicissitude in the Deep South. Therefore, they contain rich ethical connotations. As I Lay Dying, as one of his best “tour de force” and one of the most important novels of Yoknapatawpha Series published in 1930, is also one of his family-centered novels. By adept use of the “stream of consciousness” technique and the “multiple narrative perspective”, he described a tragedy of a southern poor whites family. And through these lively characters, the influence of southern plantation economy and northern capitalism on southerners’ ethical relationship, ethical thoughts and values were demonstrated to the fullest.Ethical literary criticism is a new method put forward by domestic literary critics in recent years based on the deep literary ethics. This thesis intends to adopt the view of ethical environment, ethical relationship, ethical responsibility, etc., to analyze the ethical connotations of this work. The body part will firstly make a brief introduction of the ethical environment. Then, through the analysis of the relationship between man and society, and man and self in the Bundren’s family, one can find the lack of family ethics, the disintegration of social ethics, and the collapse of religious belief. The last chapter intends to explore Faulkner’s own ethical expectation through the analyzing the impacts brought by southern women’s ethics, the patriarchy system and the puritan tradition. In the conclusion part, Faulkner strongly condemned the devastation of human nature, caused by various inhuman moral, religious and social forces, all of which have expressed the author’s expectation to build a more harmonious ethical environment andrelation. This has greatly deepened people’s understandings of William Faulkner’s work and his humanitarian standpoint. |
PDF Full Text Request