Into Faulkner through a concept of landscape.

Abstract

This thesis examines eight novels by William Faulkner by means of a critical method based on a concept of landscape. The thesis developed out of a curiosity regarding the vivid pictures that Faulkner's novels evoked in the mind of this reader. These reminded the reader of pictures similar in their vividness to those evoked in childhood by fairy tales and children's literature. In the main, here, ` the vivid Faulknemian pictures are examined from a moral point of view. The critical method follows from the idea of the literary landscape as a holistic entity, 'a prospect such as may be taken in at a glance from one point of view'. The method operates in three stages, and the vivid pictures found in the landscapes of the novels are deemed to function as centres of particular interest. In the first stage of the method, an impressionistic landscape, so called, is established, based on the facts of place, time, society, events and values given in or deducible from the novel. The vivid pictures are noted. The second stage calls for the quantification of the author's technical strategies, and in the third stage the vivid pictures are adopted as the starting points for detailed analyses of one or more aspects of the novel. The method seems to bring into focus a mature, detailed and satisfying reader's landscape which, it is hoped, functions as an R accurate reflection of the author's literary creation.