A Study Of Conflicts In Faulkner's The Hamlet From The Perspective Of Space Theory

As the core and the first novel of William Faulkner's well-known “Snopes Trilogy”,The Hamlet describes a story of the Snopes family in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County by vividly exposing various conflicts and collisions in different spaces during the social transformation period in the American South.However,studies on The Hamlet are relative less and mainly concentrate upon the structure,theme,characters,and so on.Little attention has been given to the conflict issues in this work.Many spatial descriptions in the novel can reflect the existence of various conflicts,so this thesis explores how various conflicts and their cultural connotations are embodied in the physical,social and mental spaces by using Lefebvre's space theory and the method of close reading.The conflicts in the physical space are reflected through the disharmony of landscapes and the competition for physical space.The conflicts in the social space are embodied in class struggle as well as gender clash.And the collisions in the mental space are revealed by inner conflicts of the individuals.Although there are many forms of conflicts in different spaces,these conflicts are ultimately the presentation of contradictory ideologies,ideas and values of villagers.