Week 11: A Literature of Social and Cultural Challenge
Study Guide
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| Perhaps no twentieth-century American writer has
contributed so unique and distinctive a canon as has William Faulkner. A
native of Mississippi, Faulkner transformed his community of Oxford into
Jefferson, the county seat of the broad canvas of "Yoknapatawpha County."
Peopled with the alpha and omega, those "who have seen the beginning and end" of
the transformation of the mythical South, Faulkner's kingdom draws upon the
drama of universal human conflict and what he called "the old verities and
truths of the heart, lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed." Ernest Hemingway went to war during the early campaigns of the Allies during World War I and became the first American journalist wounded in the conflict. From his experiences, in part, in war-torn territories for forty years, Hemingway nurtured a code of living that addresses his characters from the "Nick Adams" series through his last works. Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, like other African American writers, drew deeply on the horrific experiences of a vilified African-American community, and found the voice to lift the struggle to heroic postures. Ernest Hemingway Langston Hughes Ralph Ellison
This page was last modified on August 27, 2004, and is maintained by Dr. Geoffrey Grimes.
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