Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner with Wai Chee Dimock - 14. Faulkner -- As I Lay Dying, Part II

Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner (AMST 246) Professor Wai Chee Dimock traces Faulkner's appropriation of the epic genre through two conventions: the blurring of boundaries between humans and non-humans and the resurrection of the dead. She first reads Faulkner's minor character Tull and his relation to both mules and buzzards to draw out the "nature of manhood in poor whites." From Tull, she shifts focus to Jewel and suggests that his kinship with the snake and the horse foregrounds the narrative secrecy of Jewel's genealogy. As Addie Bundren's monologue reveals, Jewel's illegitimate father, the Reverend Whitfield, is similarly identified with both the horse, as the animal he rides, and the snake, whose Edenic behavior he parallels in his affair with Addie. 00:00 - Chapter 1. Humans and Non-Humans 03:50 - Chapter 2. The Epic Tradition and Homer's Cyclops 07:56 - Chapter 3. Cross-Species Kinship in Circe's Magic and Dante's Inferno 09:48 - Chapter 4. Tull's Animal Identification in As I Lay Dying 16:19 - Chapter 5. The Epic Function of Mules 21:55 - Chapter 6. Poor Whites as Buzzards 25:12 - Chapter 7. Jewel as Snake and Horse 28:22 - Chapter 8. The Mythic Horse, the Snake, and Scattered Representation 34:22 - Chapter 9. The Secretive Narrative of Jewel's Horse 42:10 - Chapter 10. The Epic Convention of Raising the Dead Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://oyc.yale.edu This course was recorded in Fall 2011.