'A Man, and a Good Man’: Youth and Misdirection in William Faulkner’s The Reivers.

Gavan Lennon

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    The publication of Nobel Laureate William Faulkner’s The Reivers: A
    Reminiscence, on 4 June, may have been the major event in the literary
    calendar of the summer of 1962, were it not surpassed by its author’s
    death thirty two days later, on 7 July. Despite the author’s prominence at
    the time and in the five decades since, The Reivers has attracted
    relatively little critical assessment compared to the rest of Faulkner’s
    output in fiction. Indeed, Anne Goodwyn Jones has identified only two
    novels — Faulkner’s first, Soldiers’ Pay (1926) and Pylon (1935) — as
    having received less critical attention than The Reivers. ‘One reason for
    this lack of interest’, suggests Jones, ‘may be the novel’s apparent
    simplicity’ (55).
    In this article I situate Faulkner’s last novel within the framework of
    his enormous cycle of interrelated texts in order to extrapolate the
    manner by which it uses an affectation of youth to simultaneously
    present and undermine a conservative blueprint for the construction of
    historical narrative. The misdirection afforded by the mask of
    youthfulness has encouraged several Faulkner scholars to engage with
    the text on less serious terms than is common in the study of his work.
    Published as it was at the beginning of the most politically explosive
    decade in the American twentieth century, The Reivers interrogates the
    conservative standpoint on issues of race and gender equality. Through
    readings of the manner through which the senses are used to describe
    racial difference in the text, I expose the text itself as a masked exposé of
    dogmatic historicising of the American South.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)46-57
    Number of pages13
    JournalPeer English
    Issue number7
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of ''A Man, and a Good Man’: Youth and Misdirection in William Faulkner’s The Reivers.'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this