Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha

Welcome to Yoknapatawpha
County!
 Yoknapatawpha County Stats:

This fictional county (where most of Faulkner's novels take place) is said


to be modeled after the town of Lafayette, Mississippi

It consists of 2,400 square miles


the county's population is 15,611, of which 6,298 are white and 9,313
are black as of the Writing of Absolum, Absolum in 1936

The name "Yoknapatawpha" is supposedly a culmination of two



Chickasaw words: Yocona and petopha, translated to mean "split land”

however, Faulkner claims that the name means "water flowing slow
through the flatland."
La Fayette, Mississippi
 Yoknapatawpha as a Symbol

If Yoknapatawpha is actually Faulkner's imagined version of a real



place, why did he choose that place?

What can Topography tell us about the purpose of Yoknapatawpha in



Faulkner's fiction?

How does this relate to Absolum, Absolum?


What Statement is Faulkner making so far by setting this story in
Yoknapatawpha?
 Quotes From the Text


“Quentin Compson was still too young to deserve yet to be a ghost but
nevertheless having to be one for all that, since he was born and bred in the
deep South the same as she was...” page 4

“...Quentin already knew. It was a part of his twenty years' heritage of breathing


the same air and hearing his father talk about the man; a part of the town's-
Jefferson's- eighty years' heritage of the same air which the man himself had
breathed...” page 7
 Works Cited
Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. Baton Rouge:
Yale University Press, 1963. 1-488. Print.

Aiken, Charles. "Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County: A Place in the American

South." Geographical Review 69.3 (1979): 331-348. Web. 21 Sep 2010.

Brown, Calvin. "Faulkner's Geography and Topography." PMLA 77.5 (1962):

652-659. Web. 24 Sep 2010.

Fowler, Doreen, and Ann J. Abadie. "A Cosmos of My Own" Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. 1-304.
Print.

Hamblin, Robert, and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner in the 21st Century: Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha . University Press of Mississippi , 2000. 1-272. Print.