AMST 246: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner
Lecture 14 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part II. Professor Wai Chee Dimock traces Faulkner's appropriation of the epic genre through two conventions: the blurring of boundaries between humans and non-humans and the resurrection of the dead. She first reads Faulkner's minor character Tull and his relation to both mules and buzzards to draw out the "nature of manhood in poor whites." From Tull, she shifts focus to Jewel and suggests that his kinship with the snake and the horse foregrounds the narrative secrecy of Jewel's genealogy. As Addie Bundren's monologue reveals, Jewel's illegitimate father, the Reverend Whitfield, is similarly identified with both the horse, as the animal he rides, and the snake, whose Edenic behavior he parallels in his affair with Addie. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 14 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part II |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. Humans and Non-Humans |
| [00:03:50] | 2. The Epic Tradition and Homer's Cyclops |
| [00:07:56] | 3. Cross-Species Kinship in Circe's Magic and Dante's Inferno |
| [00:09:49] | 4. Affinities with Animals in As I Lay Dying |
| [00:16:19] | 5. Mules, epic and tragic |
| [00:21:56] | 6. Poor Whites as Buzzards |
| [00:25:13] | 7. Jewel as Snake and Horse |
| [00:28:23] | 8. The Horse, the Snake, and Scattered Representation |
| [00:34:23] | 9. The Secretive Narrative of Jewel's Horse |
| [00:42:11] | 10. The Epic Convention of Raising the Dead |
| References |
| Lecture 14 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part II Instructor: Professor Wai Chee Dimock. Credit List [PDF]. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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