| Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors Contributor(s): Hönnighausen, Lothar (Author) |
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ISBN: 1578068738 ISBN-13: 9781578068739 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi OUR PRICE: $34.65 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: January 2006 Annotation: A critical study of the ruses and the roles with which William Faulkner masked himself and his characters |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - Regional |
| Dewey: 813.52 |
| LCCN: 97006952 |
| Lexile Measure: 1610 |
| Physical Information: 0.73" H x 6" W x 9" (1.06 lbs) 330 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 20th Century - Cultural Region - South |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: That Faulkner was a liar not just in his writing but also in his life has troubled many critics. They have explained his numerous false stories, particularly those about military honors he actually never earned and war wounds he never sustained, with psychopathological imposture-theories. The drawback of this approach is that it reduces and oversimplifies the complex psychological and aesthetic phenomenon of Faulkner's role-playing. Instead, this critical study by one of the most acclaimed international Faulkner scholars takes its cue from Nietzsche's concept of truth as a mobile army of metaphors and from Ricoeur's dynamic view of metaphor and treats the wearing of masks not as an ontological issue but as a matter of discourse. Honnighausen examines Faulkner's interviews and photographs for the fictions they perpetuate. Such Faulknerian role-playing he interprets as a mode of organizing experience and relates it to the crafting of the artist's various personae in his works. Mining metaphor as well as modern theories on social role-playing, Honnighausen examines unexplored aspects of image creation and image reception in such major Faulkner novels as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, A Fable, and Absalom, Absalom! That Faulkner was a liar not just in his writing but also in his life has troubled many critics. They have explained his numerous false stories, particularly those about military honors he actually never earned and war wounds he never sustained, with psychopathological imposture-theories. The drawback of this approach is that it reduces and oversimplifies the complex psychological and aesthetic phenomenon of Faulkner's role-playing. Instead, this critical study by one of the most acclaimed international Faulkner scholars takes its cue from Nietzsche's concept of truth as a mobile army of metaphors and from Ricoeur's dynamic view of metaphor and treats the wearing of masks not as an ontological issue but as a matter of discourse. Honnighausen examines Faulkner's interviews and photographs for the fictions they perpetuate. Such Faulknerian role-playing he interprets as a mode of organizing experience and relates it to the crafting of the artist's various personae in his works. Mining metaphor as well as modern theories on social role-playing, Honnighausen examines unexplored aspects of image creation and image reception in such major Faulkner novels as The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, A Fable, and Absalom, Absalom! |
Contributor Bio(s): Honnighausen, Lothar: - Lothar Honnighausen is a professor of English and director of the North American program at the University of Bonn. He is general editor of Transatlantic Perspectives and author of William Faulkner: The Art of Stylization in His Early Graphic and Literary Work. |