William Faulkner, Light in August

Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1932

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Light in August

(New York: Smith & Haas, 1932) is the seventh of William Faulkner’s nineteen novels and the fifth of fourteen that he set primarily in Jefferson, Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, the apocryphal town and county he created in his fiction. Though his longest novel, it took him only six months to write, from mid-August, 1931, to mid-February, 1932, and another month to complete the typescript he sent to his agent [Joseph Blotner,

Faulkner: A Biography

(1991), 280, 302]. Though

Light in August

, like

Sanctuary

, may appear to be a more conventional novel than

The Sound and the Fury

and

As I Lay Dying

, Faulkner’s extensive experiments in multiple first-person narration, the novel’s unconventional plot, convoluted structure, and complex chronologies have posed considerable…

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5854 words

Citation: Meats, Stephen E.. "Light in August". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 December 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3966, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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