Kurzbeschreibung

My doctoral project systematically historicized four modernist novels written by William Faulkner during the two decades when he was also working intermittently for major Hollywood movie studios: Sanctuary (1931); Pylon (1935); If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (1939) and Requiem for a Nun (1951). Placing the novels in the context of Hollywood production, I explored the echoes between these works of fiction and the author’s screenplays. By doing so, I demonstrated that the relationship between these two bodies of work, and by extension modernism and popular culture, was dialogic and mutually productive. This is a form of creative exchange not permitted through the traditional division of “high” and “low” culture in modernist discourse. This research involved the study of a wide range of unpublished archival materials and was supported by a Visiting Fellowship at the University of Virginia as well as research stays at the University of Mississippi and Southeast Missouri State University. I was particularly interested in the evolving presentation of gender in Faulkner’s literary and filmic writing. Over time, Faulkner’s portrayal of women in his experimental novels was increasingly inflected and mediated by the images, techniques, genres, uses of language, and working practices of commercial film that he encountered in Hollywood. This development reflects, in part, Faulkner’s encounters with female agents in the studio system who shaped, influenced, and transformed his work. More widely, Faulkner’s novelistic presentation of cross-gender creative communities as alternately vexed and productive can be read as a commentary on the intense cultural conflict and innovative collaboration that typify Hollywood production.

Projektdetails

Projektart

Dissertation

Fachgruppe

Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften

Beginn

2010

Ende

2014

Finanzierung

DFG

Einrichtung

Fachbereich/Zentralinstitut

John-F.-Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien

Institut/Seminar

Graduate School of North American Studies

Projektteam

Leitung

Dr. Benjamin Robbins (Post-Doc)

Publikationen

https://www.worldcat.org/title/gender-film-and-culture-in-the-novels-and-screenwriting-of-william-faulkner/oclc/923543186&referer=brief_results

Forschende

• Dr. Benjamin Robbins (Post-Doc)

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