Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition

221 Pages·2008·2.3 MB·English

by  Noel Polk

Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition

Faulkner and Welty
and the
Southern Literary Tradition
Noel Polk
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member
of the Association of American University Presses.
“Scar” was first published in Faulkner and War by the University Press of Mississippi, 2006.
“Testing Masculinity in the Snopes Trilogy” was first published in The Faulkner Journal 16:3
(2000–2001). I thank Dawn Trouard for permission to reprint it here.
“Faulkner in the Luxembourg Gardens” was first published in Études Faulknériennes I: Sanctuary.
Ed. Michel Gresset. Rennes, France: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1996. I am grateful to
Nicole Moulinoux for permission to reprint it here.
“The Ponderable Heart” was first published in Études Faulknériennes V: Eudora Welty and the
Poetics of the Body. Ed. Geraldine Chouard and Danièle Pitavy-Souques. Rennes, France:
Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2005. I am grateful to Nicole Moulinoux for permission to
reprint it here.
“How Shreve Gets in to Quentin’s Pants” will be published in William Faulkner: An Ecumenical
Gathering. Ed. Mario Materassi and Donald M. Kartiganer. Florence, Italy: U of Florence P,
due fall 2008. I am grateful to Mario Materassi for permission to preprint it here.
“Faulkner and the Commies” and “Domestic Violence in ‘The Purple Hat’ ” are first published
here, by the kind permission of the author.
“Water, Wanderers, and Weddings: Going to Naples and to No Place” reconstitutes parts of “Going
to Naples and Other Places in Eudora Welty’s Fiction” (first published in Eudora Welty: Eye of
the Storyteller. Ed. Dawn Trouard. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 1989) and “Water, Wanderers, and
Weddings: Love in Eudora Welty” (first published in Eudora Welty: A Form of Thanks. Ed. Louis
Dollarhide and Ann J. Abadie: Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1979).
“Reading Blood and History in Go Down, Moses” was first published in History and Memory in
Faulkner’s Novels. Ed. Ikuko Fujihira, Noel Polk, and Hisao Tanaka. Tokyo: Shohakusha, 2005.
I am grateful to Ikuko Fujihira for permission to reprint it here.
Copyright © 2008 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2008
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Polk, Noel.
Faulkner and Welty and the southern literary tradition / Noel Polk.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-934110-84-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Faulkner, William, 1897–1962—Criticism
and interpretation. 2. Welty, Eudora, 1909–2001—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Literature
and society—Southern States—History—20th century. 4. Women and literature—Southern
States—History—20th century. 5. American literature—Southern States—History and criticism.
6. Southern States—Intellectual life. 7. Southern States—In literature. I. Title.
PS3511.A86Z946353 2008
813’.52—dc22 2007038113
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
For Nancy

Contents
ix Preface
xi Abbreviations
3 Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition
22 How Shreve Gets in to Quentin’s Pants
31 Faulkner in the Luxembourg Gardens
44 Testing Masculinity in the Snopes Trilogy
68 Reading Blood and History in Go Down, Moses
82 Faulkner and the Commies
95 War and Modernism in A Fable
106 Scar
133 Water, Wanderers, and Weddings: Going to Naples and
to No Place
163 The Landscape of Alienation in “Old Mr. Marblehall”
176 Domestic Violence in “The Purple Hat,” “Magic,” and
“The Doll”
186 The Ponderable Heart
199 Works Cited
203 Index
vii

Preface
These essays began as invited lectures given to specific audiences on
specific occasions and designed to contribute to discussions of specific
themes in Faulkner’s and Welty’s works. Some were written for and deli-
vered to foreign audiences and then published in foreign journals and
proceedings and so have been mostly unavailable in this country. Their
occasional nature and the time limits necessarily imposed on panelists
have allowed me to focus on what I find most fascinating in literary
study, the smaller units of a literary work—from punctuation and other
curious occlusions to passages and characters and episodes that often go
unnoticed in the critical discourse—and their relationships to a work’s
“larger” themes, the interplay between the bricks and mortar and a work’s
grand design. I am very pleased that the University Press of Mississippi
has given me this opportunity to collect them here.
I am grateful to Seetha Srinivasan, director of the University Press,
for many years of friendship and support and for being a faithful pub-
lisher of my work, and to Walter Biggins and Anne Stascavage for their
most necessary help on this volume. I also want to thank my colleagues
at Mississippi State University, especially Rich Raymond, head of the
English Department; Phil Oldham, formerly Dean of Arts & Sciences,
and Gary Myers, now acting dean, and Peter Rabideau, Provost, for
giving me the chance to be a member of the faculty at Mississippi State,
and for their generous support in all things professional and personal.
I thank Laura West, Managing Editor of The Mississippi Quarterly, and
ix