Faulkner's South and the Yoknapatawpha Fire

Much critically discussed, analyzed, and reviewed, William Faulkner's early masterpieces (those written between 1929 and 1936) are still being researched and explored on account of their possessing those aspects that extensively add to the richness of their interpretations. Faulkner's motifs, symbols, and other thematic and stylistic devices work their way through such works, producing coherent patterns of meanings. This study has been done carefully to account for the novelist's vision of the American Civil War and the life in the postbellum South during and after this critical time in the history of the United States. Scholars and literary readers alike are to find in this book a clear, smooth discussion of such an element as that of fire which Faulkner used consistently, not only to intensify the characters' painful loss of the sense of the past glory, but also to attach to such a use a unifying function and quality, structurally and thematically speaking. Thus, the fire in Faulkner's mythical county, Yoknapatawpha, has grown expressive of characters' intense troubles, within and without.