摘 要

威廉·福克纳是20世纪美国文学史上最具影响力的作家之一，是意识流文学在美国的代表人物，以其多产和与美国南方社会的紧密联系而闻名于世。《献给艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》和《烧马棚》是福克纳的两部短篇小说代表作，其中的父子/父女关系作为重要的矛盾对立关系之一，对揭示和阐释南方社会的种族、性别和社会问题具有重要意义。

本论文从福克纳短篇小说中父亲的形象这一不常被剖析的角度入手，细致而全面地分析了《献给艾米丽的玫瑰》和《烧马棚》中父亲的形象，探析父权制对于主角的成长和命运的影响，揭露了暴君式父权影响下主人公内心的分裂和人性的异化以及这种畸形的父子、父女关系引发的家庭内部之间的矛盾对于旧南方解体的推进作用，让读者对福克纳笔下的父权专制主义、旧南方社会以及福克纳的创作思想有更深入的了解。

关键词：威廉·福克纳；《献给艾米丽的一朵玫瑰花》；《烧马棚》；父亲形象

Contents

1.Introduction 1

2.Demonstration 3

2.1 The father image in A Rose for Emily 3

2.1.1 A dictatorial tyrant 3

2.1.2 A declined aristocrat 4

2.1.3 Father’s influence on Emily’s tragic fate 5

2.2 The father image in Barn Burning 5

2.2.1 A savage white sharecropper 5

2.2.2 A paranoid loser 6

2.2.3 Father’s influence on Sartoris’s psychological conflicts 7

2.3 Common characteristics of the two fathers 8

2.3.1 The representatives of an autocratic patriarchy 8

2.3.2 The avatars of the old South 10

2.4 The functions of the father images 11

2.4.1 Triggering conflicts between family members 11

2.4.2 Accelerating the collapse of the Old South 12

3. Conclusion 12

Works Cited 14

Bibliography 15

An Analysis of the Father Images in A Rose for Emily and Barn Burning

1. Introduction

William Faulkner (1897-1962) is an American writer of novels, short stories, poems and occasional screenplays. The majority of his works is based in his native state of Mississippi. Faulkner is considered one of the most important writers of the Southern literature of the United States. Though his work was published as early as 1919 and mainly during the 1920s and 1930s, Faulkner was relatively unknown until he received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The younger Faulkner was greatly influenced by the history of his family and the region in which he lived. The Faulkner family was a prominent one in the local region. Faulkner’s great grandfather was a man of great success. When he retired from the army, he became an owner of a local plantation. At the same time, he became a famous politician, writer and entrepreneur. Before William was born, Old Faulkner built the only local railway. He was called by the locals as the “old colonel” for his outstanding contribution. When William Faulkner was a child, he often heard the story of his great grandfather and was deeply impressed. He adored his great grandfather very much so that we can see the shadow of his great grandfather in his later literary creation. However, unlike his great grandfather, his father was a failed man. He often changed his jobs and could never settle down. He was regarded as a filial son by the town. William didn’t want to be like his father, but he was shorter than his peers and this made him more addicted to his fantasy of his great grandfather. In order to become the old colonel in his mind, he vowed to become a writer and began to indulge in reading literature, which laid a foundation for his later creation.

From the early 1920s to the outbreak of World War II, he published 13 novels and numerous short stories. These works build his reputation and lead him to be awarded the Nobel Prize at the age of 52. This prodigious output includes his most celebrated novels such as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Faulkner is also a prolific writer of short stories. His first short story collection, These 13 (1931), includes many of his most acclaimed (and most frequently anthologized) stories, including “A Rose for Emily”, “Red Leaves”, “That Evening Sun”, and “Dry September”. Faulkner also writes two volumes of poetry which were published in small printings, The Marble Faun (1924) and A Green Bough (1933), and a collection of crime-fiction short stories Knight’s Gambit (1949).