Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner

Lecture Details

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner (AMST 246)Professor Wai Chee Dimock begins her discussion of Faulkners As I Lay Dying by orienting the novel to the Great Depression in the South, as focalized through such famous texts as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Once this macro history is established, she reads the narrative techniques of As I Lay Dying through two analytic lenses. First, she draws on Bakhtins notion of social dialects to underscore the language that indexes poor whites as a Southern type. Second, she marshals Frank Kermodes idea of narrative secrecy to show how two secrets in As I Lay Dying -- Dewey Dells illegitimate pregnancy and Jewels illegitimate birth -- are gradually revealed to the reader through Faulkners multiple narrators, each a speaker of a socially codified dialect, and each a practitioner of narrative secrecy in his or her own right.0000 - Chapter 1. The Odyssey and As I Lay Dying 0434 - The Chronology of As I Lay Dying0951 - The Great Depression and Poor Whites1237 - Bakhtin and the Social Dialects of the Novel 1538 - Chapter 5. Kermode and the Genesis of Secrets in As I Lay Dying 2026 - Chapter 6. The Speaking Voice and Moral Responsibility of Poor Whites3001 - Chapter 7. Dewey Dells Short Term Secret3809 - Chapter 8. Darl, Jewel, and Dewey Dells Deep Rooted Secret3824 - Chapter 9. Dewey Dells Portrait of Her Brothers4326 - Chapter 10. Vardaman and the Speech of Children Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website httpoyc.yale.eduThis course was recorded in Fall 2011.