Proposal
For this project, I intend to travel to Oxford, Mississippi.
The longtime home of William Faulkner, Oxford promises an illuminating insight
into Southern culture and Southern literature. There, I hope to examine the
relationship between literature and place, between biography and fiction. As I
drive through the South, and as I wander through Oxford, I will be looking for
connections between what I see and the prominent themes of Faulkner’s As I
Lay Dying.
Faulkner’s
great novel, the story of a journey far more harrowing than I hope mine will
be, reflects upon Southern anxieties about modernity and tradition. As the
long-suffering Bundren family travels towards the city of Jefferson, they form
a complex relationship with social and technological progress. Their literal
journey from country to city takes on a kind of allegorical significance,
whereby Faulkner and his protagonists observe the possibility, the temptations,
and the dangers of abandoning rural, agrarian traditionalism in favor of urban
vigor and technological growth. The eases and modern comforts of Jefferson
seduce the Bundrens, but this seduction is costly and complicated. A phonograph
delights Cash, and Anse is pleased to receive a set of dentures; as the novel
ends, Faulkner’s language seems to suggest that the Bundrens’ life in Jefferson
will be pleasing and comfortable. Yet the promise of a lush modern life seems
to be a crucial cause behind Darl’s mounting insanity; where medical science
brings comfort to Anse, it becomes the key instrument in an unscrupulous
pharmacist’s deception and sexual exploitation of Dewey Dell. The benefits of
modernity, often superficial, mask an anxiety about change, about the loss of
contact with tradition, and indeed with nature itself.
With
this in mind, I intend to look for signs of the relationship between tradition
and modernity in the South as I experience it during this trip. The underlying
theme of my journey will be progress, its temptations and its dangers. As I
travel to and in Oxford, I will visit centers of learning, research, and
technological growth, while keeping an eye on signs of an enduring and
distinctly “Southern” tradition. I hope to understand how the South stands in
relation to modernity, to see what tensions still exist between the old and the
new. What does it mean for the South to embrace modernity? How does the modern
interact with the “traditionally” Southern?