William Faulkner and Mortality

William Faulkner and Mortality is the first full-length study of mortality in William Faulkners fiction. The book challenges earlier, influential scholarly considerations of death in Faulkners work that claimed that writing was his authorial method of saying No to death. Through close-readings of six key works The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, "A Rose for Emily", Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses this book examines how Faulkners characters confront various experiences of human mortality, including grief, bereavement, mourning, and violence. The trauma and ambivalence caused by these experiences ultimately compel these characters to say Yes to death. The book makes a clear distinction between Faulkners quest for literary immortality through writing and the desire for death exhibited by the principal characters in the works analysed. William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound offers a new paradigm for reading Faulkners oeuvre, and adds an alternative voice to a debate within Faulkner scholarship long thought to have ended.