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AMST 246: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner

Lecture 13 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Professor Wai Chee Dimock begins her discussion of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying by orienting the novel to the Great Depression in the South, as focalized through such famous texts as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Once this macro history is established, she reads the narrative techniques of As I Lay Dying through two analytic lenses. First, she draws on Bakhtin's notion of social dialects to underscore the language that indexes poor whites as a Southern type. Second, she marshals Frank Kermode's idea of narrative secrecy to show how two secrets in As I Lay Dying - Dewey Dell's illegitimate pregnancy and Jewel's illegitimate birth - are gradually revealed to the reader through Faulkner's multiple narrators, each a speaker of a socially codified dialect, and each a practitioner of narrative secrecy in his or her own right. (from oyc.yale.edu)

Lecture 13 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Time Lecture Chapters
[00:00:00] 1. The Odyssey and As I Lay Dying
[00:04:35] 2. The Chronology of As I Lay Dying
[00:09:52] 3. The Great Depression and Poor Whites
[00:12:37] 4. Bakhtin and the Social Dialects of the Novel
[00:15:39] 5. Kermode and the Genesis of Secrets in As I Lay Dying
[00:20:27] 6. The Speaking Voice and Moralism of Poor Whites
[00:30:01] 7. Dewey Dell's Short Term Secret
[00:38:10] 8. Darl, Jewel, and Dewey Dell's Deep Rooted Secret
[00:38:25] 9. Dewey Dell's Portrait of Her Brothers
[00:43:27] 10. Vardaman and the Speech of Children

References
Lecture 13 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Instructor: Professor Wai Chee Dimock. Credit List [PDF]. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov].

Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures:

Lecture 01 - Introduction
Lecture 02 - Hemingway's In Our Time
Lecture 03 - Hemingway's In Our Time, Part II
Lecture 04 - Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Lecture 05 - Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Part II
Lecture 06 - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury
Lecture 07 - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Part II
Lecture 08 - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Part III
Lecture 09 - Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Part IV
Lecture 10 - Hemingway's To Have and Have Not
Lecture 11 - Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, Part II
Lecture 12 - Fitzgerald's Short Stories
Lecture 13 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying
Lecture 14 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part II
Lecture 15 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part III
Lecture 16 - Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
Lecture 17 - Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part II
Lecture 18 - Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part III
Lecture 19 - Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part IV
Lecture 20 - Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night
Lecture 21 - Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, Part II
Lecture 22 - Faulkner's Light in August
Lecture 23 - Faulkner's Light in August, Part II
Lecture 24 - Faulkner's Light in August, Part III
Lecture 25 - Faulkner's Light in August, Part IV