William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!: A Casebook

Front Cover
Fred Hobson
Oxford University Press, 2003 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 301 pages
Absalom, Absalom! has long been seen as one of William Faulkner's supreme creations, as well as one of the leading American novels of the twentieth century. In this collection Fred Hobson has brought together eight of the most stimulating essays on Absalom, essays written over a thirty-year span which approach the novel both formally and historically. Here are critical responses by Cleanth Brooks, John Irwin, Thadious Davis, and Eric Sundquist, as well as four essays published in the last decade. The casebook concludes with Faulkner's own remarks on the novel, delivered in a discussion with students at the University of Virginia. What emerges from all the selections is a rich and suggestive treatment of a work which Faulkner himself called "the best novel yet written by an American" and a less biased critic has called "the greatest American novel of the century... joining Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn at the pinnacle of American fiction."

From inside the book

Contents

Introduction
3
History and the Sense of the Tragic
17
Repetition and Revenge
47
Reading the Negro in Absalom Absalom
69
Absalom Absalom and the House Divided
107
The Silencing of Rosa Coldfield
151
Sutpens Design
189
Nationalism and the Color Line in Absalom Absalom
219
Reading Unreadable Revolutions
251
Remarks on Absalom Absalom
283
Suggested Reading
293
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2003)

Fred Hobson is Professor of English and Lineberger Professor of Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.