William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner (/ˈfɔːlknər/, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He is primarily known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, based on Lafayette County, Mississippi, where he spent most of his life.
Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers in American literature generally and Southern literature specifically. Though his work was published as early as 1919, and largely during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until receiving the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, for which he became the only Mississippi-born Nobel winner. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and his last novel The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked his 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century; also on the list were As I Lay Dying (1930) and Light in August (1932). Absalom, Absalom! (1936) is often included on similar lists.
>>Award
Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel". It was awarded at the following year's banquet along with the 1950 Prize to Bertrand Russell. Faulkner detested the fame and glory that resulted from his recognition. His aversion was so great that his 17-year-old daughter learned of the Nobel Prize only when she was called to the principal's office during the school day.
He donated part of his Nobel money "to establish a fund to support and encourage new fiction writers", eventually resulting in the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and donated another part to a local Oxford bank, establishing a scholarship fund to help educate African-American teachers at Rust College in nearby Holly Springs, Mississippi. The government of France made Faulkner a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur in 1951.
Faulkner was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for what are considered "minor" novels: his 1954 novel A Fable, which took the Pulitzer in 1955, and the 1962 novel, The Reivers, which was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer in 1963. (The award for A Fable was a controversial political choice. The jury had selected Milton Lott's The Last Hunt for the prize, but John Hohenberg convinced the Pulitzer board that Faulkner was long overdue for the award, despite A Fable being a lesser work of his, and the board overrode the jury's selection, much to the disgust of its members.) He also won the U.S. National Book Award twice, for Collected Stories in 1951 and A Fable in 1955. In 1946 he was one of three finalists for the first Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award and placed second to Rhea Galati.
The United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in his honor on August 3, 1987. It is noteworthy that Faulkner had once served as Postmaster at the University of Mississippi, and in his letter of resignation in 1923 wrote:
As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.
This, sir, is my resignation.
William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Speech
>>http://120.127.160.95/wbcmsc/cmain1.asp
A Rose for Emily
"A Rose for Emily" is a short story by American author William Faulkner first published in the April 30, 1930, issue of The Forum. The story takes place in Faulkner's fictional city, Jefferson, Mississippi, in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha County. It was Faulkner's first short story published in a national magazine.
>>Plot Summery
The story opens with a brief first-person account of the funeral of Emily Grierson, an elderly Southern spinster. It then proceeds in a nonlinear fashion to the narrator's recollections of Emily's archaic and increasingly strange behavior throughout the years. Emily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times. She and her father, the last two of the clan, continue to live as if in the past; neither will consent to a marriage for Emily to a man below their perceived status. Her father dies when Emily is about 30; she refuses to accept that he has been dead for three days, behavior written off by the community as part of her grieving process.
After her acceptance of her father's death, Emily revives somewhat; she becomes friendly with Homer Barron, a Northern laborer who comes to town as a contractor to pave the sidewalks. The connection surprises the rest of the community: the match would have been far below her earlier standards, and Homer had himself claimed that he was "not a marrying man." The town appeals to Emily's distant cousins; they are her closest remaining relatives, but they have been on bad terms with Emily and her father, and had not even been present at her father's funeral. The cousins arrive at Emily's house, but quickly gain a reputation even worse than that of Emily; the sentiment of the town rallies behind Emily in opposition to the cousins. Indeed, during this time, Emily buys arsenic from a druggist's shop without giving her reasons for needing it; neighbors believe that she means to poison herself with it. However, her relationship with Homer appears to solidify, and there is talk of marriage between the two. Homer leaves the area for a time, reputedly to give Emily a chance to get rid of her cousins, and returns three days after the cousins have left. One person reports seeing Homer walk in the house at night, after which he is never seen again.
Despite these turnabouts in her social status, Emily continues to behave haughtily, as she had before her father died. Her reputation is such that the city council find themselves unable to confront her about a strong smell that has begun to emanate from the house. Instead, they decide to send men to her house under the cover of darkness to sprinkle lime around the house, after which the smell dissipates. The mayor of the town, Colonel Sartoris, made a gentleman's agreement to overlook her taxes as an act of charity, though it was done under a pretense of repayment towards her father to assuage Emily's pride. Years later, when the next generation has come to power, Emily insists on this informal arrangement, flatly refusing that she owes any taxes; the council declines to press the issue. Emily has become a recluse: she is never seen out of the house, and only rarely accepts people into it. The community comes to view her as a "hereditary obligation" on the town, who must be humored and tolerated.
The funeral is a large affair; Emily had become an institution, so her death sparks a great deal of curiosity about her reclusive nature and what remains of her house. After she is buried, a group of townsfolk enter her house to see what remains of her life there. The door to her upstairs bedroom is locked; some of the townsfolk kick in the door to see what has been hidden for so long. Inside, among the possessions that Emily had bought for their wedding, lies the decomposed corpse of Homer Barron on the bed; on the pillow beside him is the indentation of a head, and a single strand of Emily's gray hair.
The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the American author William Faulkner. It employs a number of narrative styles, including stream of consciousness. Published in 1929, The Sound and the Fury was Faulkner's fourth novel, and was not immediately successful. In 1931, however, when Faulkner's sixth novel, Sanctuary, was published—a sensationalist story, which Faulkner later claimed was written only for money—The Sound and the Fury also became commercially successful, and Faulkner began to receive critical attention.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Sound and the Fury sixth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
>>Overview
The Sound and the Fury is set in Jefferson, Mississippi. The novel centers on the Compson family, former Southern aristocrats who are struggling to deal with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Over the course of the 30 years or so related in the novel, the family falls into financial ruin, loses its religious faith and the respect of the town of Jefferson, and many of them die tragically.
The novel is separated into four distinct sections. The first, April 7, 1928, is written from the perspective of Benjamin "Benjy" Compson, a cognitively disabled 33-year-old man. The characteristics of his impairment are not clear, but it is hinted that he has a learning disability. Benjy's section is characterized by a highly disjointed narrative style with frequent chronological leaps. The second section, June 2, 1910, focuses on Quentin Compson, Benjy's older brother, and the events leading up to his suicide.
In the third section, April 6, 1928, Faulkner writes from the point of view of Jason, Quentin's cynical younger brother. In the fourth and final section, set a day after the first, on April 8, 1928, Faulkner introduces a third person omniscient point of view. The last section primarily focuses on Dilsey, one of the Compsons' black servants. Jason is also a focus in the section, but Faulkner presents glimpses of the thoughts and deeds of everyone in the family.
In 1945, Faulkner wrote a "Compson Appendix" to be included with future printings of The Sound and the Fury. It contains a 30-page history of the Compson family from 1699 to 1945.
Macbeth
Macbeth (/məkˈbɛθ/; full title The Tragedy of Macbeth) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare; it is thought to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, who was patron of Shakespeare's acting company, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright's relationship with his sovereign. It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is his shortest tragedy.
A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.
Shakespeare's source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland; Macduff; and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as "The Scottish Play". Over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a "theatre of mood" and a "submerged life in the text".
Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
The Lady with the Dog
>>http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/jr/197.htm
"The Lady with the Dog" (Russian: Дама с собачкой, translit. Dama s sobachkoy) is a short story by Anton Chekhovfirst published in 1899. It tells the story of an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a young lady he meets while vacationing in Yalta. The story comprises four parts: part I describes the initial meeting in Yalta, part II the consummation of the affair and the remaining time in Yalta, part III Gurov's return to Moscow and his visit to Anna's town, and part IV Anna's visits to Moscow. One of Chekhov's most famous pieces of short fiction, Vladimir Nabokov declared that it was one of the greatest short stories ever written.
>>Introduction
Anton Chekhov was a late 19th century Russian writer famous for his short stories and plays. "The Lady with the Dog," a tale of two lovers who carry on an affair while both married to other people, is one of his most famous short stories.
Chekhov wrote the "The Lady with the Dog" in 1899, five years before his death, while he was an invalid suffering from tuberculosis. He was laid up in the seaside town of Yalta, on the coast of the Black Sea, a setting that serves as the backdrop for the lovers' initial meeting in the story. Setting isn't the only tidbit to find its way from Chekhov's life to the page; many scholars argue that the relationship at the center of this story is a reflection of the author's own romance with the actress he would eventually marry in 1901.
"The Lady with the Dog" is in many ways a typical Chekhov tale. It reflects the style and literary preferences of the author who, having written over 200 stories in his career, had certainly established a status quo. In accordance with his typical manner, the story breaks many of the rules of storytelling, particularly when it comes to plot and conclusion.
>>Plot
Dmitri Gurov is a Moscow bank worker, married with a daughter and two sons. Unhappy in his marriage, he is frequently unfaithful and considers women to be of "a lower race". While vacationing in Yalta, he sees a young lady walking along the seafront with her small dog, and endeavors to make her acquaintance. The lady, Anna Sergeyevna, is also vacationing, while her husband remains at home in an unnamed provincial town. They are soon engaged in an affair, and spend most of their time together walking and taking drives to nearby Oreanda. Though she is expecting her husband to come to Yalta, he eventually sends for her to come home, saying that something is wrong with his eyes. Gurov sees her off at the station.
Returning to Moscow and his daily routine, working by day and clubbing by night, Gurov expects to soon forget young Anna but finds he is haunted by her memory. On the ruse of going to St. Petersburg to take care of some business, he sets off to her town to find her. Learning the location of the family’s residence from a hotel porter, he finds the house, only to realize that it would be futile to intrude. In despair, he reasons that Anna has probably forgotten him and found someone else, and heads back to his hotel for a long nap.
In the evening, he remembers having seen a sign earlier promoting a performance of The Geisha. Reasoning that Anna and her husband may attend the first performance, he goes to the theater. The couple enters and he watches intently. When the husband goes out for a smoke during the first interval, Gurov greets Anna, who is bewildered and runs from him. After following her through the theater, he confronts her and she confides that she has been thinking of him constantly. Frightened, she begs him to leave and promises to come to see him in Moscow.
She makes excuses to come to Moscow, telling her husband that she is going there to see a doctor, which he "believes and does not believe". Gurov realizes that for the first time in his life he has actually fallen in love, and wonders how they can continue. While they talk of finding a plan, the story ends without a resolution.
