"The Fall of the House of Jamshyd, or: The Hamlet as a Gothic Novel." - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Etudes Faulknériennes Année : 2002

"The Fall of the House of Jamshyd, or: The Hamlet as a Gothic Novel."

Résumé

William Faulkner's The Hamlet, like Absalom, Absalom! and Light in August, is about a "dark house." The first published story out of the Snopes material, "Lizards in Jamshyd's Coourtyard," was set mostly at night in the crumbling skeleton of the Old Frenchman's Place. On first sight, the gothicism of The Hamlet could be considered second-hand, a relic of over ten years of elaboration that makes this novel unique in the development of Faulkner's career. But an analysis of the manuscripts and short story versions shows that Faulkner gradually indtensified the gothic overtones in a deliberate stylization of his material. With almost post-modernist zest, The Hamlet quotes from old classics such as Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Poe's "Black Cat," the myth of Faust, as well as recent successes that could still occupy the cultural background of his contemporary readership, such as Stephen Vncent Benét's "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and Boris Karloff's impersonation of Frankenstein's monster. Faulkner's purpose may have been partly self-parodic, but the reference to the forms of the gothic genre endows the world of Frenchman's Bend with a sense of the suprenatural in keeping with the dreamlike alienation from material realities of a Southern rural community.

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Dates et versions

halshs-00769713 , version 1 (03-01-2013)

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  • HAL Id : halshs-00769713 , version 1

Citer

Jacques Pothier. "The Fall of the House of Jamshyd, or: The Hamlet as a Gothic Novel.". Etudes Faulknériennes, 2002, 3, pp.57-63. ⟨halshs-00769713⟩

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