William-Faulkner.ppt

《William-Faulkner.ppt》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《William-Faulkner.ppt（34页珍藏版）》请在淘文阁 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。

1、vBorn in an old, proud, and distinguished family in New Albany, Mississippi.vEntered the University of Mississippi, but did not finished the freshman year. vJoined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during the First World War.vW e n t t o H o l l y w o o d a s a screenwriter, but n

2、ot successful.vE n c o u r a g e d b y S h e r w o o d Anderson, began his literary career.Major worksvFocus on the Southern subjects and consciousnessvCenter on an imaginary Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants before or after the Civil War- a regionalist.vReveal the bitterness of southern hist

3、ory and the underlying cause for the failure and decay of the South.vThe Sound and the FuryvAs I Lay DyingvAbsalom, Absalom!vLight in AugustvGo Down, Moses.vCollected StoriesWriting stylevComplexity: repetition, inconsistent punctuation, long and puzzling sentences, vague reference pronouns, compoun

4、ded adjectives, complex modifying elements, flashbacks, multiple points of view, .vStream-of-consciousness mode. vSymbolic and allusive techniques.“A Rose for Emily”By William Faulkner1. How does Faulkner handle the time in his narration of the story? vFaulkner uses a circuitous and oblique approach

5、 to deal with the time. vE.g., the funeral, the visitation of the deputation, the problem of the smell, the death of the father, Emilys affair with Homer, the visitation of the two cousins, the purchase of the poison, the Baptists visit, the reason for the two cousins visit, the purchase of mans thi

6、ngs, the disappearance of Homer Barron, teaching of china-painting, the reason for the remission of Emilys taxes, Emilys refusal to let a mailbox fastened on her door, taxing, the death of Emily, the funeral (discovery of the corpse), 2. What is the significance of Faulkners way of handling time in

7、the story?vThe non-chronological rendering of certain details and sequences enhances the tension. At the conclusion of the story, the tension is resolved, but the reader is compelled to reconsider the events and character of Emily.v This-nonlinear rendering of events has prompted a flurry (sudden ru

8、sh) of efforts to establish their chronology. vThis kind of “narrative manipulation of time calls attention to time, to the encroachment (侵占) of the past on the present, to the complexity of causative factors, vbecause we can make no sense out of the story unless we confront these issues.” vWe are m

9、ore involved actively and intensely in the narrative process because it is up to us to recreate the fibula.3. What is the effect of the use of the pronoun “we” and “they” by the narrator?vThe use of the first person narration provides believability, intimacy and elicits an empathetic response; vKeep

10、s the narrator hold a objective, reportorial stance;vProvides the alternate points of view;vallows the diversity of voices revealed, showing a “collection of attitudes”: curiosity, pity, outrage, envy, admiration and etc.vThe narrator “we” functions as an omniscient narrator in company with the pres

11、entation of a more limited view. The narrator “stands at the furthest possible position from the heart of the story and still is within it.”vThe use of “they” makes the narrative voice somewhat confusing. Distinctions between “we” and “they” sometimes separate the narrator from other members of the

12、community (“we” are teller-character while “they” are reflector-character) and sometimes mingle them together, both referring to the townspeople just like in Part II, III, IV. vThe mixing and alternate use of the teller-character and reflector-character; the internal and the external focalization an

13、d the omniscient and limited point of view vmake the narration complicated and elusive vurge the reader to participate actively in narrative process and at the same time try to follow the narrators shifting point of view, votherwise, the reader cannot make clear whom “we” or “they” refer to. 4. What

14、 are the organizational patterns of the story? vThe structural complexity includes the extensive use of analepses (回顾) and anachronies (错置). vThe web of anachronism （时间错位） each with its temporal/spatial variants, seems like a series of subtle musical variations, vwhilst （同时）the return to the first n

15、arrative suggests the recapitulation（扼要重述）of a long awaited theme. vOn the other hand, the story offers two organizational, spatial patterns, a “linear, sequential organization” and a “configurational (结构的), spatial patterning ,e.g.,vEmily is a symbol, a monument outside of time, but she also ages a

16、nd dies, and the different generations hold different attitudes to her .vHomers murder by Emily denies sequence and temporality by representing for her the joining of her Electra attachment to her father with the later passion for her lover; vit “preserves Homer from death and change”; vit “negates

17、her sexual fall,” and vit reinstates （恢复） her status as icon.vAfter the murder, she accepts the towns perception of her as beyond time, as seen in her desexing （失去性特征）herself. vNevertheless, Emily also tries to live in time. She courts Homer, she wears a gold watch, and she decorates the bedroom in

18、shades（窗帘） of rose “suggestive of her womans life which exists in time and can decay.” vWhen Emily is viewed in the sequential movement of her life, she is better understood as changing her status from victim to victimizer. vThis movement reflects “her conversion from acceptance of a role as symbol

19、to performance of a role as sign maker and manipulator.” vHer affair with Homer is her attempt to liberate her physical life from the configurational （构造性） reading assigned to it by her neighbors and accepted by herself; vwhen this attempt fails, she decides that she will at least design and control

20、 the configuration by which the sequential nature of her existence is denied, vi.e. burying herself into the past, the withdrawing into unreality and illusion and resisting change.vthe organization of the work (the narrators associative memories generating new bits of the story) keeps the “interpene

21、tration of past and present” before the reader. vIn linear time, Emily changes, as does the towns attitude toward her. vIn non-linear time, the town gives tribute to a woman who attempts, though she inevitably fails to achieve the thing that others desire: “to dominate time.”5.What is the relation b

22、etween the comic elements and the melancholy or shocking ingredients of the story?vThere is a tension between the macabre (恐怖的) and the comic elements that reside in the numerous oddities of the story. E.g., vthe smellvpurchase of the drug the corpse of Homer vThe sprinkling of lime vHer restrictive

23、 view of life her way of driving the aldermen away vtownspeoples envy Emilys miserable life vtownspeoples desire horror at the discovery v6. What motives can you attribute to Emily for her killing of Homer Barron? How are these motives related to theme?Emilys Electra complexvHer allegiance and attac

24、hment to her father drives her to murder Homer “so that he will resemble the dead father she can never forget.” (Malin)vBarron serves, after Mr. Griersons death, as surrogate. Both are pictured holding a horsewhip, and both are strong willed; both the corpse of Homer and the crayon portrait of Mr. G

25、rierson are described as “profound.” vPoisoning Homer is a murder/marriage that allows her to retain the present object of “her unresolved Oedipal desires” (Scherting). vOn the other hand, by murdering Homer, Emily acts as her father did to protect her, but she also has the forbidden lover she desir

26、es.vIn this way, she can resist change. vScherting places the blame squarely on Mr. Grierson “for Emilys distorted sexuality.” vHe extends the interpretation to the historical context by arguing that the South, like the Grersons, “attempted to protect itself through isolation and to perpetuate its v

27、alues through relationships which were fundamentally incestuous and inevitably debilitating (衰弱).”vThe story becomes, in this reading, another of Faulkners story of sexual deviation that reflects the “decay of an Old South tradition”.Revengevto avenge Homers “pseudo-courtship” that h e h a s b e e n

28、 u s i n g t o c o v e r h i s homosexuality.vTo avenge Homers betrayvTo revenge for her grotesque identity and rebel against the Southern code of conduct vJudith Fetterley thinks that grotesqueness “results when stereotypes are imposed upon reality” and that the “real grotesque is the stereotype it

29、self.” vFetterley underscores the importance of the tableau of Emily and her father. vEmilys “identity is determined by the constructs of her fathers mind” from which she cannot escape, vthis identity extends to a community that insists, unlike Faulkner, in defining her as “Miss Emily. vGiven her tr

30、eatment by her father and the community, Emily is “forced to become engaged in a defiance of time and reality.” vDeprived of the normal fulfillment of her sexuality, Emily lives a death-in-life existence, and the severity of her repression manifests itself in criminal acts. vFetterley concludes that

31、 the story is a “supreme analysis of what men do to women by making them ladies; vIt is also an exposure of how this act in turn defines and recoils (反作用于) upon men.”vBrooks believes Emilys mental state reflects the “malaise of the age.” She exhibits her defiant nature when she entertains Homer desp

32、ite the communitys disapproval. vWhen she reacts to Homers leaving, she crosses the line from “harmless obsession” to “homicidal mania (杀人狂). ”7. What are the central themes?vthe decline of the South, especially the Southern aristocratic class. vthe conflict between the two different value systems a

33、nd two social orders, i.e. the new and the old, the North and the South, represented respectively by Homer Barron and Miss Emily. vthe clash between the present and the past, a dilemma the modern man feels when he lives virtually in memory. v So the main theme of the story is the withdrawal into unr

34、eality and illusion or resistance to change. 8. What is the significance of the story? vThe story is a symbolic clash of post-Civil War North and South or antebellum South and modern South. These symbolic meanings are closely related to the readings in which Emily is seen in the human effort of seek

35、ing to control time but inevitably failing (her necrophilia 恋尸癖 extents to societys necrophilic “living with a dead but unburied past”). On the level of North-South conflict, Emily is also the model of the Souths effort to stall change. vThe story also reflects the conflict between present time and

36、past time. vPresent time is represented by Homer Barron, the new aldermen who tax Emily, the new generation, and the narrator. vPast time is represented by Colonel Sartoris, Tobe, and the board of aldermen who rescinded (remitted) Emilys taxes. vEmilys necrophilia is emblematic of an entire society

37、that “lived with a dead but unburied past” in such continued forms as the law that required black females to wear aprons on the street.vThe South, like Emily, seeks to hold on to a way of life “even when it is dead.” Homer is a symbol of the New South and by extension, the present. The story makes a “forthright statement about the effect of past on present and the responsibility that follows the discovery of this effect.”