1、william faulkner,1897-1962,setting of his novels,yoknapatawpha country the place functions as an allegory or a parable of the south. his writings are not only about its social and economic history, but its emotional and psychological history as well.,themes of his novels,conflicts between the old an

2、d new the old , trying to keep the old moral value such as honor, courage, pride, while at the same time carried a moral burden of guilt. the new adopted a ruthless and unscrupulous way of living brought by mass industry production.,characters,his characters are often deeply disturbed, and in some s

3、ense, driven, with their past and with the present forces that lie beyond their control and yet so relentlessly shape their destinies.,techniques,1. stream of consciousness 2. multiple point of view: one event is the centre, with various points of view radiating from it (not a linear structure) 3.us

4、e of images to convey the mood, atmosphere, the emotional and psychological climate of his fictional world,techniques,4. penultimate moment he often began his story at the penultimate moment of the chronology of the events in the novel. eg the sound and the fury 1)benjys narrative, 7 april 1928; 2)

5、quentins narrative, 2 june 1910; 3) jasons narrative, 6 april 1928; 4) dilseys narrative, 8 april 1928. (egs. light in august, a rose for emily),“a rose for emily”,1. the story 2. the characters 3. the themes 4. meaning of the title 5.the gruesome and gothic elements in the story 6.unconventional na

6、rrative,“a rose for emily”,1.the story 2. the characters,“a rose for emily”,3.reading of some samples: 1 when miss emily grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of her

7、 house, which no one save an old man-servant-a combined gardener and cook-had seen in at least ten years.,alive, miss emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when colonel sartoris, the mayor-he who fathered the edict

8、 that no negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity,a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarn

9、ished gold head. her skeleton was small and spare; her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.,she did not ask them to sit. she just stood in the door

10、and listened quietly until the spokesman came to a stumbling halt. then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold chain. her voice was dry and cold. i have no taxes in jefferson. colonel sartoris explained it to me. perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and

11、satisfy yourselves. but we have. we are the city authorities, miss emily. didnt you get a notice from the sheriff, signed by him? i received a paper, yes, miss emily said. perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . i have no taxes in jefferson.,but there is nothing on the books to show that, you

12、 see we must go by the- see colonel sartoris. i have no taxes in jefferson. but, miss emily- see colonel sartoris. (colonel sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) i have no taxes in jefferson. tobe! the negro appeared. show these gentlemen out.,2 so she vanquished them, horse and foot, just as sh

13、e had vanquished their fathers thirty years before about the smell. that was two years after her fathers death and a short time after her sweetheart-the one we believed would marry her -had deserted her. after her fathers death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly

14、saw her at all. a few of the ladies had the temerity to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the negro man-a young man then-going in and out with a market basket.,a neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, judge stevens, eighty years old. but what will you ha

15、ve me do about it, madam? he said. why, send her word to stop it, the woman said. isnt there a law? im sure that wont be necessary, judge stevens said. its probably just a snake or a rat that nigger of hers killed in the yard. ill speak to him about it. the next day he received two more complaints,

16、one from a man who came in diffident deprecation. we really must do something about it, judge. id be the last one in the world to bother miss emily, but weve got to do something.,so the next night, after midnight, four men crossed miss emilys lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing al

17、ong the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. they broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. as they recrossed the lawn, a window that had been

18、dark was lighted and miss emily sat in it, the light behind her, and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. they crept quietly across the lawn and into the shadow of the locusts that lined the street. after a week or two the smell went away.,(continued) that was when people had begun to fe

19、el really sorry for her. people in our town, remembering how old lady wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the griersons held themselves a little too high for what they really were. none of the young men were quite good enough for miss emily and such.,so when she g

20、ot to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldnt have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized. when her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people we

21、re glad. at last they could pity miss emily.,she told them that her father was not dead. she did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. just as they were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and th

22、ey buried her father quickly.,3 she was sick for a long time. when we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows-sort of tragic and serene. the town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in

23、 the summer after her fathers death they began the work.,the construction company came with riggers and mules and machinery, and a foreman named homer barron, a yankee-a big, dark, ready man, with a big voice and eyes lighter than his face. pretty soon he knew everybody in town. whenever you heard a

24、 lot of laughing anywhere about the square, homer barron would be in the center of the group. presently we began to see him and miss emily on sunday afternoons driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.,i want some poison, she said to the druggist. she w

25、as over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keepers face ought to look. i want some poison, she said. yes, miss emily. what kind?

26、for rats and such? id recom- i want the best you have. i dont care what kind.,4 so the next day we all said, she will kill herself; and we said it would be the best thing. when she had first begun to be seen with homer barron, we had said, she will marry him. then we said, she will persuade him yet,

27、 because homer himself had remarked-he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the elks club- that he was not a marrying man. later we said, poor emily,so we were not surprised when homer barron-the streets had been finished some time since-was gone.,when we next saw miss e

28、mily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. during the next few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it ceased turning. up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like the hair of an active man.,5 t

29、he man himself lay in the bed. for a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. the body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. what was left o

30、f him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.,then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. one of us lifted som

31、ething from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of irongray hair.,“a rose for emily”,4.meaning of the title faulkner: the title was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who has had a tragedy, an irrevocable trage