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Faulkner
and War
Faulkner
and Yoknapatawpha July 22-27, 2001
Unlike
his great American rival, Ernest Hemingway,
William Faulkner is seldom considered a “war”
novelist. His preoccupation with the South has
sometimes obscured the extent to which so much of
his fiction is in fact bound up with the impact of
war, whether it be the American Civil War, World
War I, or World War II. Novels such as Soldier’s
Pay, Flags in the Dust, The
Unvanquished, and A Fable, as well as
more than a dozen short stories, are dominated
either by scenes of war, the preludes to or the
aftermaths of war, while other novels--Light in
August and Absalom, Absalom!, for
example--contain episodes of war that are crucial
to their ultimate meaning. The aim of “Faulkner
and War” (July 22-27, 2001) is to explore the
role that war played in the life and work of a
writer whose career seems forever poised against a
backdrop of wars going on or recently ended or in
the volatile years between.
In addition to nine formal lectures by a group of
scholars from the United States, France, Germany,
and Portugal, the Rivendell Theatre Ensemble of
Chicago will present a play, Faulkner's Bicycle.
Praised by the Chicago Sun-Times as “one
of those small, perfect pieces of stage magic that
typify the glories of Chicago theater,” the play
is set in Oxford in 1962 and concerns a fictional
family that finds itself intimately involved with
the famous writer a few months before his death.
“It stirs the heart with its mix of brutally
honest reality and lovely poetry, life-affirming
laughter, unsettling madness and the characters’
palpable longing for even momentary romance and
triumph.”
Four scholars appearing at the conference for the first
time will be John Limon, of Williams College, John
Lowe, of Louisiana State University, Paula
Mesquita, of the University of Birmingham, UK, and
Nicole Moulinoux, of the University of Rennes.
Limon, author of Writing After War: American
War Fiction from Realism to Postmodernism and Stand-Up
Comedy in Theory, Or, Abjection in America,
will discuss Faulkner’s attempt to show how much
of the sense of reality that the Great War
produced could be rendered in fiction without
explicit reference to it, as, for example, in one
novel seemingly remote from the war, As I Lay
Dying. Lowe, author of Jump at the Sun:
Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy and
coeditor of The Future of Southern Letters,
focuses on biographical and textual fraternal
rivalry in Faulkner as a metaphor for war,
history, and American finance capitalism. Mesquita,
who is also a doctoral candidate at the University
of Coimbra, Portugal, will discuss the effects of
war on white women characters in Absalom,
Absalom! Moulinoux, founder and president of
the William Faulkner Foundation, France,
inaugurated in 1994, will discuss French
perspectives on Faulkner’s treatment of war.
Returning to the conference will be Don Doyle, of
Vanderbilt University, author of, most recently, Faulkner's
County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha,
who will be discussing the Civil War in terms of how
it was experienced in Lafayette County, whose
history plays a large role in Faulkner’s
apocryphal Yoknapatawpha. Lothar Hönnighausen,
director of the North American Program of the
University of Bonn and author of William
Faulkner: The Art of Stylization and William
Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors, will take up
the question of Faulkner’s evolving ideological
attitudes toward war in Soldiers’ Pay, A
Fable, and The Mansion. David Madden, of
Louisiana State University, author of over a dozen
works of fiction and criticism, including The
Suicide’s Wife, and founding director of the
United States Civil War Center, will address Absalom,
Absalom! as a Civil War novel.
Also returning to the conference will be Noel Polk, of
the University of Southern Mississippi, author or
editor of over a dozen volumes, and James Watson,
University of Tulsa, author or editor of four
volumes on Faulkner, including the recent William
Faulkner, Self Presentation and Performance.
Polk will be discussing Absalom, Absalom! and
the short story “The Leg.” Watson will look at a
number of the early novels and stories in a paper
entitled “William Faulkner and the Theater of
War.”
Other program events will include discussions by
Faulkner friends and family; Voices from
Yoknapatawpha, a series of dramatic readings
from Faulkner’s work; and sessions on “Teaching
Faulkner” directed by James Carothers, University
of Kansas, Robert Hamblin, Southeast Missouri State
University, Arlie Herron, University of Tennessee at
Chattanooga, and Charles Peek, University of
Nebraska at Kearney. The University’s John Davis
Williams Library will exhibit Faulkner books,
manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia. After
Reading Faulkner: His Myriad World, a selection
of photographs Arlie Herron made during Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha Conferences over the years, will be
exhibited in the Gammill Gallery at Barnard
Observatory.
The conference will begin on Sunday, July 22, with a
reception at the University Museums for an
exhibition of photographs entitled River Walk,
as well as two exhibits from the Museums’
collections relating to the theme of the conference,
one of Civil War memorabilia and the other of World
War I posters. The afternoon program will include
performance by the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band,
with Othar Turner, readings from Faulkner, and the
announcement of the winners of the 12th Faux
Faulkner Contest. Other events will include a Sunday
buffet supper served at the home of Dr. and Mrs. M.
B. Howorth Jr., “Faulkner on the Fringe”--an
“open-mike” evening at the Southside Gallery,
tours of North Mississippi on Tuesday, and a picnic
served at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, on
Wednesday. The conference will end on Friday with a
reception at the Gary home, in which Faulkner lived
when he and his family moved to Oxford in 1902.
Donald M. Kartiganer
 A
special treat during the Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha tour of Columbus will be a
session during which General Joseph L. Fant
will play audio tapes and display photographs
made during William Faulkner's visit to West
Point in April 1962. Then a literature
professor at West point, General Fant hosted
Faulkner's visit there as a guest lecturer and
later edited a volume about that visit.
The University Press of Mississippi is
publishing a new edition of Faulkner at West Point, long out of print. |
For more information about the conference contact the
Institute for Continuing Studies, P.O. Box 879, The
University of Mississippi, University, MS 386770897;
telephone 662-915-7282; fax 662-915-5138; e-mail cstudies@olemiss.edu.
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For on-line information consult www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/faulkner/index.htm,
and for on-line registration consult www.ics.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner_yoknapatawpha_2001.html.
For
information about participating in the conference
through Elderhostel, call 877-426-8056 and refer to
the program number 24225-072201-01, or contact
Carolyn Vance Smith by telephone (601-446-1208) or
by e-mail (carolyn.smith@colin.cc.ms.us).
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Photograph:
William
Faulkner,
December (1918), Southern Media Archive, Special
Collections, University of Mississippi Libraries.
The official poster for the 2001 Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha Conference is illustrated with an
image from the Southern Media Archive’s Cofield
Collection. Flat posters, suitable for framing, are
available for $10.00 each plus $2.50 postage and
handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales
tax. Send all orders to the Center for the Study of
Southern Culture with a check made payable to the
University of Mississippi
or with Visa or MasterCard account number and
expiration date. Credit card orders also may be made
by calling 800-390-3527.
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