William Faulkner ( 1897 – 1962)

William Faulkner ( 1897 – 1962)

Faulkner's great grandfather, Colonel William Falkner (Faulkner added the "u" to his name), was born in 1825, and moved to Mississippi at the age of fourteen. He was a lawyer, writer, politician, soldier, and pioneer who was involved in several murder trials - including two in which he was accused - and was a best-selling novelist. During the Civil War he recruited a Confederate regiment and was elected its colonel, but his arrogance caused his troops to demote him, so he left to recruit another regiment. After the war he became involved in the railroad business and made a great deal of money. He bought a plantation and began to write books, one of which became a bestseller. He ran for Mississippi state legislature in 1889, but his opponent shot and killed him before the election.

Faulkner's grandfather was the colonel's oldest son, John Wesley Thompson Falkner. He inherited his father's railroad fortune and became first an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and then later the president of the First National Bank of Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner's father was Murray Falkner, who moved from job to job before becoming the business manager of the University of Mississippi, where he and his family lived for the rest of his life.

William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897, and began to write poetry as a teenager. He was an indifferent student, and dropped out of high school when he was fifteen. During World War I, he joined the Canadian Royal Flying Corps - he was too short to join the U.S. Air Force - but never fought; the day he graduated from the Flying Corps, the Armistice was signed. The only "war injury" he received was the result of getting drunk and partying too hard on Armistice Day.

After the war, Faulkner came back to Oxford, enrolled as a special student at the University of Mississippi, and began to write for the school papers and magazines, quickly earning a reputation as an eccentric. His strange routines, swanky dressing habits, and inability to hold down a job earned him the nickname "Count Nocount." He became postmaster of the University in 1921, but resigned three years later, after the postal inspector finally noticed how much time Faulkner spent writing (and ignoring customers). In 1924 his first book of poetry, The Marble Faun, was published, but it was critically panned and had few buyers.

In early 1925, Faulkner and a friend traveled to New Orleans with the intention of getting Faulkner a berth on a ship to Europe, where he planned to refine his writing skills. Instead, Faulkner ended up staying in New Orleans for a few months and writing. There, he met the novelist Sherwood Anderson, whose book Winesburg, Ohio was a pillar of American Modernism. His friendship with Anderson inspired him to start writing novels, and in a short time he finished his first novel, Soldier's Pay, which was published in 1926 and was critically accepted - although it, too, sold few copies. Faulkner eventually did travel to Europe, but he quickly returned to Oxford to write.

Faulkner wrote four more novels between 1926 and 1931: Mosquitoes (1927), Sartoris(1929), The Sound and the Fury (1929), and As I Lay Dying (1930), but none of them sold well, and he earned little money during this period. Sartoris, also known as Flags in the Dust, was Faulkner's first book set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. The difficulty Faulkner faced getting Flags in the Dust published led him to give up on the publishing process in general, and he decided to write only for himself. The result of this was The Sound and the Fury, the first of Faulkner's truly classic novels. The Sound and the Fury was published to good critical reception, although it still sold very few copies.

In 1929, Faulkner married Estelle Oldham. He lived with her and her two children from a previous marriage, Malcolm and Victoria, in Oxford, Mississippi. In 1931, Estelle gave birth to a daughter, Alabama, who died after just a few days. His only surviving biological daughter, Jill, was born in 1933. He is known to have had a romantic affair with Meta Carpenter, secretary of Howard Hawks, the screenwriter for whom Faulkner worked in Hollywood. From 1949-1953, he had an affair with Joan Williams, who wrote about the relationship in her 1971 novel The Wintering.

Faulkner wrote his next novel, As I Lay Dying, while working the night shift at a powerhouse. With this novel's publication, Faulkner was finally, if still falteringly, a writer on the literary scene. However, Faulkner still did not have any financial success until he published Sanctuary in 1931. He wrote Sanctuary to sell well, which it did, but it also tarnished his reputation in the eyes of some critics, and that affected his success for the rest of the decade. From then through the 1940s, Faulkner wrote several of his masterpieces, including Light In August, Absalom, Absalom!, The Wild Palms, The Hamlet, and Go Down, Moses. At the time these books made Faulkner very little money, so he was forced to work in Hollywood as a screenwriter.

In 1950, Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, and, in typical Faulkner fashion, he sent his friends into a frenzy by stating that he would not attend the ceremony (although he eventually did go). This award effectively turned his career around, bringing him the economic success that had so long eluded him. However, most critics find the works he wrote after winning the prize largely disappointing, especially compared to his earlier, mythical works.

In the latter part of the 1950s, Faulkner spent some time away from Oxford, including spending a year as a writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia. He returned to Oxford in June of 1962 and died of a heart attack on the morning of July 6 of that year.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1949

Banquet Speech by William Faulkner (excerpt)

A Rose For Emily 

You can listen to the story Here

Study The Story in Depth:

Psychological Character Analysis

Study Guide

Analysis 1

Analysis 2

Major Themes
Interpretation

Reading Questions for A Rose for Emily (William Faulkner, 1930)

Part 1

1. In the first paragraph of the story, we see that Faulkner uses a first person plural narrator. Why do you think Faulkner prefers this? How does this affect your understanding of the story?
2. Why is Miss Emily Grierson described as “a fallen monument”?
3. What could Miss Emily’s house represent? Comment on the narrator’s description of the house in the first and the fifth paragraphs.
4. Where does the story take place? Collect some information about the setting.
5. Comment on the following excerpt. “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town…”
6. What does the father’s portrait, as mentioned in the fifth paragraph, represent? Does the narrator mention about the portrait anywhere else in the story? If yes, in what ways could this be significant?
7. What could Miss Emily’s ticking watch symbolize? What does it tell us about Miss Emily? How does the watch contribute to our understanding of the themes of the story?

Part 2

1. Comment on the narrator’s sequence of events by referring to the events both in Part 1 and Part 2. How does this affect your understanding of the story?
2. Find the paragraphs in which the narrator mainly mentions about Miss Emily’s father and Miss Emily’s reaction towards her father’s death. Then examine the relationship between the daughter and the father.

Part 3

1. Part 3 opens with the following paragraph: “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows–sort of tragic and serene.” What might be the reason for the narrator’s emphasis on her looking like a girl?
2. How does the narrator describe Homer Barron? What could “Homer” connote? What could Barron connote?
3. What do we learn about the attitude of the community towards the relationship between Homer Barron and Miss Emily in Part 3?

Part 4

1. What else do we learn about the Jefferson community’s reaction towards the relationship between Homer and Emily in the first four paragraphs of Part 4? Give some examples. From whose perspective do we learn all this? To what extent would you consider this information reliable?
2. Comment on the Baptist minister’s silence after his interview with Miss Emily: “Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister–Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal– to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened during that interview, but he refused to go back again.”
3. Comment on the following excerpt: “When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to them.” Why not?

Part 5

1. In what way(s) could the crayon face of Miss Emily’s father be significant? Can you find a similar reference to her father in earlier sections of the story?
2. Comment on what the following excerpt might tell us about the relationship between Miss Emily and the townspeople: “…and the very old men –some in their brushed Confederate uniforms–on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.”
3. After Miss Emily’s death, what do we discover in the room “which no one had seen in forty years”? Why is the second pillow on the bed important? What does it show to us? Discuss Miss Emily’s motive for her action.

More questions

1. Comment on the title of the story: What does “rose” symbolize?
2. What does the depiction of the manservant tell us about the historical and social context in America then? How do the townspeople approach him? What is his name and what might it connote?
3. Would you consider Miss Emily a scapegoat? Discuss.
4. Who is the protagonist of the story?
5. Who is the antagonist of the story? What does the antagonist represent in the story?
6. Why does the narrator scramble the chronology of events in the story?
7. What type of woman is represented through Miss Emily Grierson?
8. Find some references to social class in the story and discuss what these might indicate about the social and historical context in the story.
9. To what extent would you consider the story a critical commentary about Southern society? 

Discussion questions for William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

1. Reconstruct the time and place of the story. Although there are questions about the timeline (we only know that her taxes were remitted in 1894), Emily's youth is identified with the time and ideals of the pre-war Confederate South. Consider also that the story takes place in Jefferson, a small town in Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi, which goes through a great deal of change in this time, leaving behind but still claiming to value the Old South.
2. Are there any passages or aspects of the story which leave you confused or which seem irrelevant to the plot? Are you reminded of any other stories you have read or seen on film or television?
3. At what points did you notice any foreshadowing of the ending? Did the story prepare you to expect something different from Miss Emily?
4. This story is told by "we": who do you imagine this narrator (or narrators) to be? Young or old? Male or female? Both? What is their attitude toward Emily? How is this represented by their calling her "Miss Emily"? What do they remember about her? How does this shape your attitude toward her? Do you find yourself sympathizing with her situation as the center of the town's attention (and gossip)?
5. Women of the Old South and of a "good family" were often put on pedestals as paragons of virtue and respectability and given special treatment as "ladies." How do you see these attitudes at work in this story? How have they shaped Miss Emily's life and how people view her? Why is she called a "fallen monument" in the first paragraph?
6. What does the title tell you about the story? Why is it not called "A Rose for Miss Emily"? Read Faulkner's interpretation of the story, stated many years after he wrote it. What other interpretations are possible about the story which are different from or even contradictory to Faulkner's interpretation?

T.S.Eliot

T.S.Eliot 

(26 Sept. 1888-4 Jan. 1965)

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born in St. Louis, Missouri, of an old New England family. He was educated at Harvard and did graduate work in philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and Merton College, Oxford. He settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and eventually literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber, of which he later became a director. He founded and, during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939), edited the exclusive and influential literary journal Criterion. In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen and about the same time entered the Anglican Church.

Eliot has been one of the most daring innovators of twentieth-century poetry. Never compromising either with the public or indeed with language itself, he has followed his belief that poetry should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language and that such representation necessarily leads to difficult poetry. Despite this difficulty his influence on modern poetic diction has been immense. Eliot's poetry from Prufrock (1917) to the Four Quartets (1943) reflects the development of a Christian writer: the early work, especially The Waste Land (1922), is essentially negative, the expression of that horror from which the search for a higher world arises. In Ash Wednesday(1930) and the Four Quartets this higher world becomes more visible; nonetheless Eliot has always taken care not to become a «religious poet». and often belittled the power of poetry as a religious force. However, his dramas Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Family Reunion (1939) are more openly Christian apologies. In his essays, especially the later ones, Eliot advocates a traditionalism in religion, society, and literature that seems at odds with his pioneer activity as a poet. But although the Eliot of Notes towards the Definition of Culture(1948) is an older man than the poet of The Waste Land, it should not be forgotten that for Eliot tradition is a living organism comprising past and present in constant mutual interaction. Eliot's plays Murder in the Cathedral (1935), The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party(1949), The Confidential Clerk (1954), and TheElderStatesman(1959) were published in one volume in 1962; Collected Poems 1909-62 appeared in 1963.

From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967, Editor Horst Frenz, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1969

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book seriesLes Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures.

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1948/eliot-bio.html

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1948 was awarded to T.S. Eliot "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".

The Nobel Prize in Literature Acceptance Speech 1948 T.S. Eliot

"The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock"

Listen to this eloquent rendition of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in which Eliot conveys the frustration and irony of this notable poem.  While listening to the poem study the hypertext of "The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock" HyperText

The HarperAudio release “T.S. Eliot Reads".

Dr. Abernathy discusses the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Study the following materials and get ready to discuss the poem in class:

Analysis 1

Study Guide

Analysis 2

Answers to Questions About the Poem

Miscellaneous Links

Study Questions

Identify the following characters and images: J. Alfred Prufrock, John the Baptist, Michelangelo, the Eternal Footman, Lazarus, Prince Hamlet, singing mermaids Reading Questions: Read the translation of the quotation in Italian from Dante's Inferno that serves as our epigraph, and return to it once you have finished the whole poem. Why do you suppose T.S. Eliot wants to begin the poem this way? How is the damned soul speaking his secrets from the flames of hell in a similar situation to J. Alfred Prufrock? How is the audience of that damned soul (Dante's persona) in a similar situation to the audience listening to J. Alfred Prufrock's frantic confessions? In the opening line, the speaker states, "Let us go then, you and I." Who is the you here? (Several possibilities here). The speaker (Prufrock) compares the sunset to a "patient etherised upon a table." Why do you suppose Prufrock would compare a sunset to some hospital patient who has been anesthetized and is waiting for an operation? The speaker refers to the surrounding cityscape as having "one-night cheap hotels" and "sawdust restaurants." What is this part of town like, apparently? In the second stanza, we have two lines that are disjointed from the earlier stanza. Here, Prufrock's mind appears to flash to a different location, where the "women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo." Who was Michelangelo? If the women are spending all their time talking about high Renaissance art, how must their situation and their location be different from Prufrock's current place of wandering? The next stanza break flashes away from the room with the women. Where are we now? Have we returned to the first location? Why or why not? What is the yellow fog compared to in a simile? How is the fog like such a creature? What does Prufrock mean when he says, "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"? Have you ever had to "prepare a face" before you have met someone? Why would one try to prepare an artificial face? Prufrock says "there will be time to murder to create." Is he being literal here, and talking about actually killing people and creating new ones? Or does this connect with the earlier passage about "preparing a face?" Or does it connect with the latter passage about "a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred indecisions"? Prufrock says there will be time for all this "Before the taking of a toast and tea." Apparently, Prufrock is trying to boost his courage before undertaking what frightening mission? Why would such a simple task be so terrifying to Prufrock? After a fifth stanza that flashes back to the room of artsy women, the sixth stanza has Prufrock asking, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" What is that Prufrock is daring himself to do? Why is he so frightened about that room full of brainy women discussing art? Prufrock reassures himself that there will be "Time to turn back and descend the stair." What does he mean by this, i.e., what can he do if he changes his mind? Why do you suppose T. S. Eliot chooses the verb descend rather than ascend? Does this connect with the Dante quotation about a guy trapped in hell in any way? What physical features cause Prufrock anxiety as he imagines going down the stairs? What does he imagine people will say about him? What does Prufrock mean, "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" How can one thin, balding, aging man disturb the entire universe? What does Prufrock mean, "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons"? How big is a coffee spoon? How regularly does a person use such as spoon? What does Prufrock mean when he says he has already known the "eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase"? How can the way someone looks at you or the way someone uses a "formulated" label for you leave you fixed in place and trapped? Prufrock imagines people's eyes stabbing through his body and impaling him to the wall where he wriggles as people examine him--why would Prufrock use this imagery from bug-collecting? How is appropriate or inappropriate? Prufrock asks how he can begin to spit out all the "butt-ends" of his days and ways. If a butt-end is the left-over bit of a smoked cigar, what does he imply about how he has spent his life? When Prufrock says he has "known the arms" already, how is this an example of synecdoche? What is he talking about? Why is so strangely excited to note that these bare, braceleted arms with white skin are lightly downed with faint hair? What does Prufrock think is Explain the anastrophe in "arms that wrap about a shawl." Think about it for a moment: what's weird about the phrasing? Note the synecdoche in lines 73-74. Why doesn't Prufrock compare himself to a complete crab? Why is a crab particularly appropriate for Prufrock generally? (Ask a marine biologist about the way crabs travel and see how it matches the way Prufrock travels through life....) Explain the biblical allusion to John the Baptist in lines 81-82. Who are what is "The Eternal Footman"? Why is this footman or servant snickering at Prufrock? In line 87, the verb tense switches to rhetorical pluperfect "would it have been worth it?" What does this shift in verb tense indicate? What changes in Prufrock's mind or in his plans between lines 86 to line 87? Explain how Prufrock is connected to Lazarus in lines 94 et passim? How does this reference to coming back from the dead also connect with Dante and the initial epigram at the beginning of the poem? What do we make of Prufrock's protest that he is not "Prince Hamlet"? Why is it ironic or appropriate that Prufrock thinks of Hamlet as his epitome of a great hero? (Think back to Hamlet's nature in Hamlet....) Why is Prufrock agonizing over how to wear his trousers? What's odd about the way Prufrock contemplates combing his "hair behind"? Does one normally comb his hair from the rear to cover the forward part of the head? What does this suggest about the aging Prufrock's hair and why he combs his hair forward this way? Why is Prufrock stymied by the thought of eating peach? Why would eating a peach in public be problematic for him? Prufrock imagines beautiful mermaids singing along the beach, but what does he fear or doubt in the following line? Prufrock imagines himself under the water with the mermaids in "chambers of the sea." What happens at the end though when he hears the conversation of human voices around him that awakens him from his daydream? Passages for Identification: Be able to explain who wrote this passages, what work they come from, and briefly explain their significance, context, or importance in the work. A: Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherised upon a table? B: In the room, the women come and go Speaking of Michelangelo. C: And indeed, there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair With a bald spot in the middle of my hair." D: For I have known them all already, known them all-- Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. E: Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet, and here's no great matter. F. Would it have been worthwhile, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question? G: I grow old . . . I grow old. . . . I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk along the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think they will sing to me. H: We have lingered in the chambers of the sea, By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Just For Fun

You can watch the musical "Cats" Here