Abstract
This chapter examines the notion of context by comparing William Faulkner’s novel Light in August (1932) with Nella Larsen’s Quicksand (1928), and argues that the two authors have more in common than one might assume. More specifically, it considers how reading Faulkner alongside Larsen may help to resituate the former’s “Southern” writing about race in wider national and transnational contexts. The chapter also discusses a notion of intertextuality that leans on Roland Barthes’ reading of every text as “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.” It suggests that both novels interrogate racial ideology in America, particularly the “one drop rule” that originated in the South, and furthermore, looks at the characters’ adoption of an understanding of racial identity that defines them as “black.”
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Faulkner and formalism : returns of the text : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2008 |
Editors | Annette Trefzer, Ann J. Abadie |
Place of Publication | Jackson, Mississippi |
Publisher | University Press of Mississippi |
Publication date | 2012 |
Pages | 144-162 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2012 |