9781840460797

In William Faulkners major works of fiction, the reader finds an extraordinary vision of what Robert Penn Warren calls 'the dark complications of Southern life', an extreme symbolic rendering of the ways and means of decline that characterised the Southern states of the US during the early twentieth century. Now recognised as two of Faulkner's greatest novels, The Sound and the Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930) were commercial failures in the decade following their publication, and received from many critics only a grudging recognition of difference rather than talent. By the end of the Second World War, however, the reputation of both novels had grown, and Faulkner's great fictional creation, Yoknapatawpha County, had become as much a part of America as any real area of the Mississippi landscape. In this Icon Critical Guide, Nicolas Tredell explores the wealth of critical material generated by these two exceptional works of modernist fiction. From the initially mixed critical responses to the novels in the early 1930s, the Guide follows the enormous growth of interest in Faulkner's work across six decades. New writings shaped by a range of critical theories are discussed, offering the reader a clear view of the place now given to one of Americas most innovative and influential novelists.