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Hunting the Sun upends all previous Faulkner biography, scholarship, and criticism by tracing to Honoré de Balzac virtually everything in William Faulkner's oeuvre. Faulkner's work departs, often confusingly, from the traditional Romantic focus of novels. The reason for the confusion is that Faulkner was rewriting Balzac's La Comedie humaine, itself a prose revision of Dante's Divine Comedy, in order to create his own comedy. More specifically, Faulkner abandons the metaphysical basis of the earlier works and replaces them with a psychosexual one; for example, Balzac's «The Succubus» becomes Faulkner's «Carcassonne», which the American renders an erotic fantasy. Virtually all of Faulkner's major works, and many of the lesser ones, have direct sources in Balzac's work.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Merrill Horton received his Ph.D. in American literature from the University of South Carolina, where he taught from 2002 to 2008.
Zusammenfassung
Upends Faulkner biography, scholarship, and criticism by tracing to Honore de Balzac in William Faulkner's oeuvre.
Bericht
«It has long been known that Faulkner was a serious reader of Balzac as a young man. Once Faulkner became a famous writer in his own right, he would also refer to Balzac frequently in his public statements in response to the question of who were his most esteemed literary models and precursors. Fluent in the oeuvres of these two great novelists, Merrill Horton now gives us a sweeping and suggestive account of their myriad points of contact and interaction. Anyone who is interested in Faulkner's conception of Yoknapatawpha County and in his creativity as a writer will learn much from this book.» ( Michael Zeitlin, English Department, University of British Columbia; Co-Editor, 'The Faulkner Journal' (2003-2008)
