Hauptseminar William Faulkner and Beyond

-Tell about the South. What is it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all” a young Canadian stereotypically implores in Absalom, Absalom! (1932). Surely enough his inventor William Faulkner would become one of the most famous writers of the ‘Global South’, to be cited whenever one was ready to talk about American literature as a hemispheric affair. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, for instance, declared that William Faulkner was his favorite author, but he also contended that Faulkner was really a writer of the Americas rather than of the U.S.A. since Faulkner’s representations of class, race and gender resonated rather well with other plantation societies in the Caribbean and in Latin America. But what does this mean? And what does it mean that an author rather than a specific book is seen as a product and a commodity of the Americas? This course will seek to address these questions through an in-depth study of two of William Faulkner’s most influential novels – The Sound and Fury (1929) and Absalom, Absalom! (1932). Please purchase and read the Norton Critical edition of The Sound and the Fury and the Vintage edition of Absalom, Absalom!. Additional material will be made available on the (electronic) reference shelf of the library, but participants will also be expected to engage in individual research and to contribute annotated bibliographies to the classroom debate. You will have to write a term paper. Anglistik Universität Duisburg-Essen SoSe 2013 alle Lehrämter, alle Lehrämter Professorin Buchenau Barbara