AMST 246: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner
Lecture 15 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part III. Professor Wai Chee Dimock concludes her discussion of As I Lay Dying with an analysis of its generic form. Using Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter to anchor her discussion of the American literary tradition, she argues that As I Lay Dying continually negotiates the comic and the tragic genres as we shift from one perspective to another: one character's comic gain is often another's tragic loss. She traces the losses and gains of Cash, Jewel, and Darl throughout the novel, showing how their new "balances" by the end reconstitute the Bundren family and draw lines of kinship around the "haves" and "have nots" among family members. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 15 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, Part III |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. As I Lay Dying and the American Tradition |
| [00:05:49] | 2. Tragedy in The Scarlet Letter and As I Lay Dying |
| [00:12:32] | 3. The Comic Dimension of the Fish |
| [00:18:45] | 4. The Comic Economy of As I Lay Dying |
| [00:24:48] | 5. Cash as a "Have Not" |
| [00:32:09] | 6. Anse as a "Have" |
| [00:34:30] | 7. Jewel's Broken Kinship with Animals |
| [00:39:49] | 8. The Reconstitution of Kinship |
| [00:43:13] | 9. Darl as a "Have Not" |
| References |
| Lecture 15 - Faulkner's As I Lay Dying. Part III Instructor: Professor Wai Chee Dimock. Credit List [PDF]. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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