William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: A Casebook / Edition 1

by Fred Hobson

Overview

Absalom, Absalom! has long been seen as one of William Faulkner's supreme creations, as well as one of the leading American novels of the twentieth century. In this collection Fred Hobson has brought together eight of the most stimulating essays on Absalom, essays written over a thirty-year span which approach the novel both formally and historically. Here are critical responses by Cleanth Brooks, John Irwin, Thadious Davis, and Eric Sundquist, as well as four essays published in the last decade. The casebook concludes with Faulkner's own remarks on the novel, delivered in a discussion with students at the University of Virginia. What emerges from all the selections is a rich and suggestive treatment of a work which Faulkner himself called "the best novel yet written by an American" and a less biased critic has called "the greatest American novel of the century... joining Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn at the pinnacle of American fiction."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195154788
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/26/2003
Series:	Casebooks in Criticism
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	8.22(w) x 6.36(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Fred Hobson is Professor of English and Lineberger Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. History and the Sense of the Tragic, Cleanth Brooks2. Repetition and Revenge, John Irwin3. The Signifying Abstraction: Reading "The Negro" in Absalom, Absalom!, Thadious Davis4. Absalom, Absalom! and the House Divided, Eric Sundquist5. The Silencing of Rosa Coldfield, Minrose Gwin6 Sutpen's Design, Dirk Kuyk, Jr.7. "The Direction of the Howling": Nationalism and the Color Line in Absalom, Absalom!, Barbara Ladd8. Absalom, Absalom!, Haiti and Labor History: Reading Unreadable Revolution: Richard Godden9. Remarks on Absalom, Absalom!, William FaulknerSuggested Reading