- Jahrgang 65 (2020)
- Vol. 65 (2020)
- >
- Ausgabe 1
- Nr. 1
- >
- Seiten 27 - 42
- pp. 27 - 42
Fathers and Lovers: "As I Lay Dying" by William Faulkner
Seiten 27 - 42
DOI https://doi.org/10.33675/AMST/2020/1/5
open-access
This publication is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives 4.0. (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
This essay analyzes William Faulkner’s experiment in "As I Lay Dying". Among other readings, the novel can be seen as an interrogation of the notion of fatherhood and (perhaps surprisingly) as an attempt to ask what love is. The essay focuses on two fathers, Anse Bundren and Vernon Tull, reading them as, on the one hand, lovers and, on the other hand, as the instance of the Lacanian Name-of-the-Father, something ignored in the Bundren family by Addie, whose control over the minds of her children bars them from achieving a viable sense of self and access to desire. Using psychoanalytical (mostly Lacanian) concepts, the essay concludes with the proposition that
1 Baker, Julia K. “Literature and Less.” 1930. Times-Picayune [New Orleans, LA] 26 Oct. 1930: 33. Rpt. in William Faulkner: The Contemporary Reviews. Ed. Thomas Inge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 47-48. Print.
2 Bedient, Calvin. “Pride and Nakedness: As I Lay Dying.” Modern Language Quarterly 2.1 (1968): 61-76. Print.
3 Bleikasten, André. “Fathers in Faulkner.” The Fictional Father: Lacanian Readings of the Text. Ed. Robert Con Davis. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1981. 115-46. Print.
4 ---. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1973. Print.
5 >---. The Ink of Melancholy: Faulkner’s Novels from The Sound and the Fury to Light in August. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2017. Print.
6 Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1963. Print.
7 Brown, Calvin S. A Glossary of Faulkner’s South. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1976. Print.
8 >Caron, James E. “Emerson’s Sublime Pastoralism, Parody, and Second Sight in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” The Faulkner Journal 29.1 (2015): 71-99. Print.
9 Davis, Robert Con. “The Symbolic Father in Yoknapatawpha County.” Journal of Narrative Technique 10.1 (1980): 39-55. Print.
10 Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. 1930. New York: Vintage Classics, 1996. Print.
11 ---. Faulkner at the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia, 1957-1958. Ed. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1959. Print.
12 ---. The Sound and the Fury. 1929. New York: Random House, 1987. Print.
13 ---. “William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12.” The Paris Review 12 (1956): 28-52. Rpt. in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. First Series. Ed. Malcolm Cowley. New York: Viking, 1959. 119-41. Print.
14 Freud, Sigmund. The Schreber Case. Standard Edition 7. 1911. Trans. Andrew Webber. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.
15 Hattenhauer, Darryl. “The Geometric Design of As I Lay Dying.” Colby Quarterly 30.2 (1994): 146-53. Print.
16 Inge, M. Thomas. William Faulkner: The Contemporary Reviews. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
17 Lacan, Jacques. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.” Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. 30-113. Print.
18 ---. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. 1-7. Print.
19 ---. “On a Question Preliminary to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis.” Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. 179-225. Print.
20 ---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Psychoses. Book III: 1955-1956. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York: Norton, 1993. Print.
21 ---. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Book VII: 1959-1960. Trans. Dennis Porter. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.
22 ---. “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious.” Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. 292-325. Print.
23 ---. “La Troisième.” Bulletin intérieur de l’École Freudienne de Paris 16 (Nov. 1974): 178-203. Print.
24 Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. 1873. Trans. Marianne Cowan. South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1962. Print.
25 Ricœur, Paul. Oneself as Another. 1990. Trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1992. Print.
26 Roberts, Diane. Faulkner and Southern Womanhood. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994. Print.
27 Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. 1916. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Columbia UP, 2011. Print.
28 Schreber, Daniel P. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. 1903. Trans. Ida MacAlpine and Richard A. Hunter. London: W. Dawson, 1955. Print.
29 Thomières, Daniel. “Sons but not Lovers: Fatherhood and Identity in Three Classic American Novels.” Journal of Language, Literature and Culture 60.1 (2013): 16-33. Print.
30 Waid, Candace. The Signifying Eye: Seeing Faulkner’s Art. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2013. Print.
