William Faulkner and Mortality by Ahmed Honeini

William Faulkner and Mortality by Ahmed Honeini

William Faulkner and Mortality is the first full-length study of mortality in William Faulkner’s fiction. The book challenges earlier, influential scholarly considerations of death in Faulkner’s work that claimed that writing was his authorial method of ‘saying No to death’. Through close-readings of six key works – The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, "A Rose for Emily", Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, and Go Down, Moses – this book examines how Faulkner’s characters confront various experiences of human mortality, including grief, bereavement, mourning, and violence. The trauma and ambivalence caused by these experiences ultimately compel these characters to ‘say Yes to death’. The book makes a clear distinction between Faulkner’s quest for literary immortality through writing and the desire for death exhibited by the principal characters in the works analysed. William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound offers a new paradigm for reading Faulkner’s oeuvre, and adds an alternative voice to a debate within Faulkner scholarship long thought to have ended.

"This volume brings a valuable contribution to Faulknerian criticism, a noteworthy achievement for an author on whom so much has been writtenHoneini’s prose is clear, and the arguments put forward are utterly convincing and perspicuous."-- Solveig Dunkel (University of Picardy-Jules Verne), in Transatlantica: American Studies Journal, 2021 (Volume 2)

"This volume brings a valuable contribution to Faulknerian criticism, a noteworthy achievement for an author on whom so much has been written. Honeini’s prose is clear, and the arguments put forward are utterly convincing and perspicuous."

-- Solveig Dunkel (University of Picardy-Jules Verne), in Transatlantica: American Studies Journal, 2021 (Volume 2)

"William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound is a key work for any scholars looking at the author’s mediations on loss, life, grief, and more broadly, gendered life in the American South."

-- Katie Anne Tobin (University of Durham), United States Studies Online

“This volume combines “two themes within Faulkner’s work—death and literary voice” (14), and in doing so, it offers a new approach to reading both. [Honeini] takes meticulously researched, complex ideas and outlines them succinctly, making this work a pleasure to read”

--Lorie Watkins Massey, Mississippi Quarterly

Ahmed Honeini teaches in the Department of English at Royal Holloway, University of London. He earned his PhD from Royal Holloway on the work of William Faulkner in 2018, and he was previously educated at King’s College London and University College London. He has published with the Mississippi Quarterly and United States Studies Online. He has also been awarded various research grants, including from the British Association for American Studies (BAAS), the Hemingway Society, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society. Finally, he is the founding director of the Faulkner Studies in the UK Research Network (@Faulkner_UK on Twitter). His main research interests are Faulkner, literary modernism, and American fiction, theatre, and film.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780367501358
ISBN 10	036750135X
Title	William Faulkner and Mortality
Author	Ahmed Honeini
Series	Routledge Studies In Twentieth-Century Literature
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Taylor & Francis Ltd
Year published	2023-01-09
Number of pages	184
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.