Faulkner and gender : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1994 ; [the 21st Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, sponsored by the University of Mississippi in Oxford, July 31 - August 6, 1994

A study of gender in the works of the Nobel Prize author. Thirteen original papers from the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference held in 1994 at the University of Mississippi These thirteen original essays from the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held in 1994 at the University of Mississippi, examine William Faulkner's texts in terms of their surprising range of gender portrayals. The collection explores such themes as the male homosocial urge ay the heart of warfare, the blurring of gender distinctions in Faulkner's epicene figures, the function of cross-dressing as a form of defiance of traditional hierarchies. Several of the essays see in Faulkner a challenge to the culture vs. nature dichotomy itself, suggesting that sex may be a product of gender rather than its origin, that the line between the biological given and the social performance may be even more tenuous than we have assumed. More than any other of the various contextualist approaches brought to bear on Faulkner's work, the focus on gender exemplifies the theory of the cultural construction of reality. Recent literary criticism, in large part owing to the emergence of feminism, has convincingly argued the difference between gender and sex, between the acculturated and the naturel. Among the results of the attention to gender in Faulkner studies is a fresh sense of fictional character as a site of multiple, sometimes clashing, personae, each gender role a signifier threatening to float free, speaking the reigning discourse, but always with a touch of conscious or unconscious parody. I Want To Go Home : Faulkner, Gender, And Death / Doreen Fowler -- Faulkner : The Artist As Cuckold / Noel Polk -- Faulkner's Crying Game : Male Homosexual Panic / John N. Duvall -- Sex And Gender, Feminine And Masculine : Faulkner And The Polymorphous Exchange Of Cultural Binaries / Robert Dale Parker -- Maternalizing The Epicene : Faulkner's Paradox Of Form And Gender / David Rogers -- Did Ernest Like Gordon? : Faulkner's Mosquitoes And The Bite Of Gender Trouble / Minrose C. Gwin -- Selling A Novel : Faulkner's Sanctuary As A Psychosexual Text / James Polchin -- Narcissa's Love Letters : Illicit Space And The Writing Of Female Identity In There Was A Queen / Michael E. Lahey -- Miss Rosa As Love's Androgynous Advocate : Gender And Narrative Indeterminacy In Chapter 5 Of Absalom, Absalom! / Andrea Dimino -- Faulkner's Greek Amphora Priestess : Verbena And Violence In The Unvanquished / Patricia Yaeger -- Gender, War, And Cross-dressing In The Unvanquished / Deborah Clarke -- Faulkner Unplugged : Abortopoesis And The Wild Palms / Joseph R. Urgo -- Mister : The Drama Of Black Manhood In Faulkner And Morrison / Philip M. Weinstein. Faulkner And Yoknapatawpha 1994; Edited By Donald M. Kartiganer And Ann J. Abadie. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.