The World of William Faulkner

W. Miner

• Publisher: Bonhopai Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781779793720
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In The World of William Faulkner, Ward L. Miner offers a compact yet insightful study of Faulkner's literary universe — how the writer's Mississippi roots, psychological intensity, and narrative daring fused into a single, haunting voice. Originally published in 1952 (with later editions in 1963), Miner explores how place, memory, and moral conflict recur in Faulkner's fiction — from the dusty backroads of Yoknapatawpha County to the swirling shadows of inner consciousness.

Miner situates Faulkner's work in its regional and historical context, examining how race, tradition, and change inform his characters' tragedies and resilience. He pays special attention to recurring motifs — time, family, guilt, and the South's troubled legacy — revealing how Faulkner's imagination draws from both the land and the inherited dramas of a fractured society. With clarity and respect, Miner argues that to understand Faulkner is to enter a world where language itself becomes a terrain of remembrance and moral reckoning.

 Though just 170 pages in many editions, Miner packs dense insight into each chapter, making this guide a superb companion to reading The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Light in August, and beyond. For students and readers drawn into Faulkner's shadows, The World of William Faulkner remains a dependable map through a difficult and luminous literary terrain. 

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CREDITS
• I — TWO SMALL TOWNS
• II — ACTUALITY
• III — LEGEND
• IV — PARALLELS AND CONTRASTS
• V — HISTORICAL PATTERNS
• VI — MORAL PATTERNS
• APPENDIX — United States Census Reports
• BIBLIOGRAPHY