Course Description
Summary
You sent in your application weeks ago and now you've finally gotten your swag: your Faulkner patch, your Faulkner commemorative button, the coffee mug with Faulkner's pen and ink drawn face on it, and your special edition copy of Absalom! Absalom!, and maybe now you're wondering, Well, who else is in this club?
Wonder no more.
In this class, we'll be reading not Faulkner but around Faulkner, paying close attention to writers who claim Faulkner as an influence, who have written or spoken critically on Faulkner's work (and sometimes 'critically' about Faulkner himself), and those who deny any involvement of Faulkner in their work. We will dive into their creative work, their critical work, and other scholarship that, with varying degrees of success, tries to draw thin lines from the work of Faulkner to some of the most influential writers and thinkers to follow after him. Authors might include Mario Vargos LLosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Louise Erdrich, Richard Wright, Edouard Glissant, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and others, in an attempt to see how these various writers might be in conversation with each other, and potentially with Faulkner as well. Students will also be asked to choose one Faulkner novel written actually by Faulkner to read outside of class in order to write a final critical essay.
