Absalom, Absalom: History, Identity, and Class Consciousness

1
Absalom, Absalom History, Identity, and Class
Consciousness

• Ramon Saldivar
• Stanford University

2
Faulkner as a Third World Writer

• link between historical narrative and social and
  racial ideology
• subject formation in relation to the emerging
  colonized world as it begins to throw off its
  colonial burden
• Faulkners analysis of the colonial and emerging
  postcolonial subject

3
Story and Plot in Absalom, Absalom

• The best novel yet written by an American
• Title of the novel 2 Samuel 13-18
• Sutpens Design Absalom p. 212

4
Story and Plot

• Viktor Shklovsky, Story v. Plot
• Story is a THEMATIC concept
• Plot is a COMPOSITIONAL concept made up of
  devices
• Plot is the specific peculiarity of narrative art

5
Three plots of Sutpens story

• Chapter 1, Rosa Coldfields narrative, August
  1909
• Chapters 2-4, Mr. Compsons narrative, summer
  1909
• Chapter 5, Rosas story continues
• Chapters 6-8, Quentin Compsons and Shreve
  McCannons narrative, Jan 10, 1910

6
Romance

• A lone hero
• Embarks on a melodramatic Quest
• Through a Symbolic Universe
• Unformed by networks of social relations
• Unfettered by the pressures of real social
  constraints
• Object of his quest is eroticized and sensual

7
Proairetic Code of Narration

• The logic of actions
• How the completion of an action can be logically
  derived from its initiation
• How these completed actions combine with other
  actions to form sequences

8
The Hermeneutic Code of Narration

• Concerns the questions and answers that structure
  a story
• Their suspense
• Partial unveiling
• Eventual resolution into MEANING

9
Plot combination of Proairetic and Hermeneutic
Codes

• In Proairetic
• Actions and sequences of actions of the narrative
  are assembled into larger wholes
• In Hermeneutic
• Sort things out to see the significance of actions

10
Rosas Narrative of Southern Innocence

• The Romance of the South
• The evils source and head which had outlasted
  all its victims Absalom, p. 12
• Fatality and curse on the South and on our
  family Absalom p. 14
• He was not articulated in this world. He was a
  walking shadow Absalom p. 139

11
Mr. Compsons Narrative of Southern Irony

• The Critique of Romance
• Lawless opportunity
• Moral Credit
• Misogyny

12
Quentin and Shreves Metanarrative

• Romance Undone Paradox and Contradiction
• Things that just have to be whether they are or
  not, Absalom p. 260
• Social Construction and Aesthetic Design