Department of English

William Faulkner: An introduction to the fiction, with special attention to how, following Pound's modernist dictum, "Make it new," Faulkner made the "Old South," its vexed history and complex legacies, "new" and "modern." We will read four of his major novels, The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, along with a selection of his short stories and his final comic novel, The Reivers. We will explore cultural and historical contexts, questions of genre and subject formation, constructions of race and gender, especially "southern white masculinity." The format will be lecture with time allotted for discussion. Two examinations (a midterm and a final), and one paper will be required.