William Faulkner

William Faulkner was an American novelist and short-story writer whose experimental works often depict the history and social conflicts of the American South through the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

The Sound and the Fury: A 1929 novel about the decline of the Compson family, told through four sections with distinct narrators and timelines. Its fractured narration and family history are among the clearest expressions of Faulkner’s method.
Stream of consciousness: A narrative technique that represents the flow of a character’s thoughts, perceptions, and associations. Faulkner uses it to render consciousness directly, most strikingly in Benjy’s section of The Sound and the Fury.
Oxford, Mississippi: A city in northern Mississippi that has served as the seat of Lafayette County since 1837. Faulkner lived there for much of his life, and its landscape informed fictional Jefferson.
Estelle Oldham Franklin: An American woman who married William Faulkner in 1929 and was his wife until his death. Her marriage to Faulkner coincided with the period of his major novels and life in Oxford.
Nobel Prize in Literature: An annual international literary award established by the will of Alfred Nobel. Faulkner received the 1949 prize for his contribution to the modern American novel.
As I Lay Dying: A 1930 novel recounting the Bundren family’s journey to bury their mother through multiple first-person narrators. Its rotating voices show Faulkner using perspective to make a family’s journey radically various.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose account is limited, distorted, or otherwise not fully dependable. Conflicting narrators leave key events in Faulkner’s novels open to reconstruction and doubt.
Yoknapatawpha County: A fictional Mississippi county created by Faulkner and used as the setting for many of his works. This recurring setting gave his separate novels and stories a shared local history and geography.
Ben Wasson: An American literary agent and editor who represented William Faulkner. Wasson helped Faulkner navigate publishing and supported his early career.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: An American literary award recognizing distinguished fiction published in the United States. Faulkner received the prize for A Fable in 1955 and for The Reivers in 1963.

Linked from 22 pages