Shakespeare’s American Inheritors II: William Faulkner
Journal
Shakespeare Conference
Date Issued
2004
Author(s)
Abstract
The article traces a rhetorical relationship between William Faulkner’s prose style in Absalom, Absalom! and the language of William Shakespeare’s tragic period, epitomized in Hamlet , through the trope of hendiadys —one through two—and other figures of coupling, doubling, and yoking. The major claim is that Shakespeare gives to the English language a particular, contorted form of expression in his great tragic works that subsequent writers, preeminently Faulkner, adopt willy-nilly when confronting the primal and conflictual bases of tragic predicaments. In Faulkner’s case, the racial and sexual crimes and tensions at the heart of his region’s history are expressed in his most brilliant and contorted text through an unusual use of figures of doubling that has not attracted proper critical attention to date. The article addresses this lack, and speculates about the nature of tragedy itself and its necessarily difficult expression in any language or literary tradition.
SDGs
Description
Bo?azi?i University, Istanbul Turkey, May 12, 2004.
Type
conference paper