William Faulkner
Research papers on William Faulkner examine his famous novels and their place in American Literature. The writers at Paper Masters will custom write research on Faulkner or any of his works, focusing on the theme and any other requirement you have received for your literature project.
William Faulkner research papers have stated that Faulkner's work achieved public recognition in the late forties and around the time of his death, which occurred in 1962, and that there was an irony in this because his greatest work had occurred in the thirties and what came after did not nearly reach the heights that Faulkner attained in that decade. And indeed what is generally considered to be the heart of Faulkner's work, the novels "that confirmed his reputation as one of the finest of modern novelists" are as follows:
- The Sound and the Fury (1929)
- As I Lay Dying (1930)
- Sanctuary (1931)
- Light in August (1932)
- Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
There are several biographical reasons that may explain why Faulkner peaked when he did. There is also an explanation having to do with historical circumstance; the literary tone of the 1930s was very different from the literary tone that took its place after World War II.
One of the most important aspects of Faulkner's character was that he was both very self-destructive and very independent in an intellectual sense. Both of these traits are indicated in a statement of Faulkner's that Minter quotes in his biography of the writer, "Quit school and went to work in grandfather's bank. Learned the medicinal value of liquor". Throughout his life Faulkner had a terrible time with alcohol and throughout his life Faulkner was a consummate "outsider" who did not tend to fall into any established pattern of middle class success. He dropped out of high school while in the eleventh grade and, after World War I, he attended Ole Miss for a year. He was not the type of man that could fit into a stable existence. His was the life of the visionary artist and he wandered through a landscape that was essentially pathless. If such a life is interesting, it does not make for consistency or longevity of any kind. Not even artistic longevity. Faulkner was always artistically as well as emotionally erratic. Sundquist has stated, "Bad writing is bad writing and some of Faulkner's is very bad indeed". There are passages in even Faulkner's best work, which are virtually unreadable and which surely seem to have been written in an alcohol induced fog.
Nor was Faulkner's relationship with alcohol of a type that could easily be dealt with. The intensity of his drinking problem militated against "recovery" and so did his way of regarding it. Minter noted that Faulkner's believed that alcohol offered visions of "timeless beatitude". As a man with a romantic self-image-that of the prophetic writer-such visions were, no doubt, important to him not merely in and/of themselves, but as spiritual propaedetutics for the practice of his craft. William Faulkner's relationship to John Barleycorn was of such a nature as to make it very difficult to walk away from that relationship. Perhaps the key sentence of Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, at least in terms of its being an indicator of Faulkner's emotional outlook is, "I believe that man will not only endure: he will prevail".