Natural Aristocracy
History, Ideology, and the Production of William Faulkner
By Kevin Railey
University of Alabama Press
Kevin Railey uses a materialist critical approach--which envisions literature as a discourse necessarily interactive with other forces in the world--to identify and historicize Faulkner’s authorial identity. Working from the assumption that Faulkner was deeply affected by the sociohistorical forces that surrounded his life, Railey explores the interrelationships between American history and Faulkner’s fiction, between southern history and Faulkner’s subjectivity. Railey argues that Faulkner’s obsession with history and his struggle with specific ideologies affecting southern society and his family guided his development as an artist, influencing and overdetermining characterizations and narrative structures as well as the social vision manifest in his work. By seeing Faulkner the artist and Faulkner the man as one and the same, Railey concludes that the celebrated author wrote himself into history in a way that satisfied the image he had of himself as a natural, artistic aristocrat, based on the notion of natural aristocracy.
After examining two prevailing and opposing ideologies in the South of Faulkner’s lifetime--paternalism and liberalism--Railey shows how Faulkner’s working-through of his identifications with these forces helped develop his values and perceptions as an artist and individual. Railey reads Faulkner’s fiction as exploring social concerns about the demise of paternalism, questions of leadership within liberalism, and doubts about both an aristocracy of heritage and one of wealth. This reading of The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Absalom, Absalom!, the Snopes trilogy and The Reivers details Faulkner’s explorations of various manifestations of paternalism and liberalism and the intense conflict between them, as well as his attempts to resolve that conflict.
Providing new insights into the full range of Faulkner’s fiction, Natural Aristocracy is the first systematic materialist critique of the author and his world.
Railey’s systematic study identifies and historicizes Faulkner’s special authorial ideology, an ideology that `closely resembles the notion of natural aristocracy articulated in America by Thomas Jefferson.’ . . . The author delves into historical reality—particularly class structure as revealed in paternalism, populism, and liberalism—and connects Faulkner’s views of history and his fiction through fresh, penetrating readings of the novels. . . . Railey’s intelligent arguments ask for careful consideration.’
—Choice
Railey shows convincingly that the absence of any real leadership with the liberalism that suffuses the South in modern times (at least, post-slavery times) is a large part of the problem. To explore this conundrum, Railey includes one of the best assessments of Faulkner’s creation of the Snopeses that criticism has given us.’
—Southern Literary Journal
This carefully wrought and enlightening volume adds valuable new insights to Faulkner scholarship.’
—World Literature Today
Kevin Railey is currently dean of the Graduate School and professor of English at Buffalo State, State University of New York.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part One: History, Ideology, Subjectivity
1. Faulkner's Mississippi: Ideology and Southern History
2. Faulkner's Ideology: Ideology and Subjectivity
Part Two: Faulkner, Paternalism, Liberalism
3. The Sound and the Fury: Faulkner's Birth into History
4. Sanctuary: The Social Psychology of Paternalism
5. As I Lay Dying and Light in August: The Social Realities of Liberalism
Part Three: Faulkner's Authorial Ideology
6. Absalom, Absalom! and Natural Aristrocracy
7. Absalom, Absalom! and the Southern Ideology of Race
Part Four: Faulkner's Social Vision
8. The Snopes Trilogy as Social Vision
9. The Reivers: Imaginary Resolutions and Utopian Yearnings
Notes
Works Cited
Index
