A Cosmos of My Own: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1980

"A Cosmos of My Own" (Papers presented at the 1980 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi) Edited by Doreen Fowler and Ann J. Abadie Contributors: Robert Hamblin, Panthea Reid Broughton, James B. Carothers, Louis Daniel Brodsky, Ellen Douglas, Charles Nilon, and Francois Pitavy. Reflecting recent developments in Faulkner criticism, the papers delivered at the 1980 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference point the way to a new and relatively unexplored avenue of research, that of the study of relationships among Faulkner's seemingly distinct novels. No longer satisfied to look only at the individual work, critics are instead surveying the whole field of Faulkner's fiction. Many of the papers in this volume direct attention to the full scope and range of Faulkner's fictional world, searching for, and finding, unity, harmony, and interrelationships. Some of the essays, like Ellen Douglas's "Faulkner in Time" and James Carothers's "The Road to 'The Reivers,'" examine all of Faulkner's novels, seeking to uncover an overall design and meaning. Others trace the appearances, in work after work, of one theme or figure. Among the subjects considered in this way are Faulkner's women, his black characters, his heroes, his aristocrats, and his attitude toward death. Taken together, these essays implicitly acknowledge the appropriateness of the metaphor of a cosmos for Faulker's fictional creation. To be fully and accurately understood, each single part of Faulkner's vast system of fictional meanings, like the separate worlds in a cosmos, must be assessed in the context of the whole.