William Faulkner and Southern History

One of America's greatest novelists, William Faulkner was a writer deeply rooted in the American South. In works such as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner drew powerfully on Southern themes, attitudes, and atmosphere to create his own world and place -- the mythical Yoknapatawpha County -- peopled with quintessential Southerners such as the Compsons and Sartorises. Indeed, to a degree perhaps unmatched by any other major twentieth-century no…