"They got . . .": Ernest J. Gaines's Semiotic Reversal of William Faulkner

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY Pub Date : 2023-11-30 DOI:10.1353/mss.2022.a913485
Matthew Teutsch
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Both Gaines and Faulkner participate in the “on-going cultural discourse” of race in the United States, and specifically in the South. Drawing upon Smith’s assertion, this article examines the ways that each author uses a specific, third-person pronoun to explore the semiotic connotations between that word and issues of race and segregation.</p> <p>Throughout his career, Gaines commented on the influence that Faulkner had on his writing. In 1969, Gaines told Gregory Fitzgerald and Peter Marchant that for “A Long Day in November,” he got the style “from Faulkner and from Joyce” (13). Speaking with Fred Beauford in 1972, Gaines commented on the way that Faulkner made him listen to people talk: “[T]his man taught me how to listen to dialogue; he taught me how to leave out. You can say one word and if you say it right and build up to it and follow through, it can carry as much meaning as if you had used an entire sentence.” While Faulkner taught Gaines structure, style, and dialogue, the Louisiana author had “no interest in Faulkner’s philosophy,” and this is where Gaines’s response to and reworking of the Mississippian come into play (19).</p> <p>Through his use of the third-person plural pronoun “they,” Gaines directly confronts “Faulkner’s philosophy,” using the semiotic connections of the word to point out the ways that language works to render individuals invisible and construct meaning. In “Discourse in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin points out that literature calls for “dialogic penetration into the word,” which “opens up fresh aspects in the word <strong>[End Page 437]</strong> . . . which, since they were revealed by dialogic means, become more immediate to perception” (352). Thinking about specific words and the connotations they inherently bring to mind, we can explore the ways that Gaines deploys the word “they” throughout some of his works and consider these instances in relation to Faulkner’s description of Dilsey and her family in the appendix to <em>The Sound and the Fury</em> (1929), which first appeared in Malcolm Cowley’s 1946 <em>The Portable Faulkner</em>.</p> <p>After extensively chronicling the history of the Compson family from 1699–1945 and relating what happened to the Compson characters after the end of the novel, Faulkner’s appendix relegates a sentence apiece for TP, Frony, Luster, and Dilsey. He introduces this section by writing, “And that was all. These others were not Compsons. They were black” (270). He concludes the appendix with the “infamous” two-word sentence for Dilsey: “They endured” (271). Through the use of “they,” Faulkner strips Dilsey of her individuality and creates an essentialist representation of his African American characters in the novel, all of which converge in the image of Dilsey Gibson. Through his use of the pronoun “they,” Gaines turns the referent around, focusing its gaze on the white community, presenting white people not as individuals but as a singular entity that maintains power through oppression, subjugation, and surveillance.</p> <p>While Dilsey does endure the downfall of the Compson family, we do not see her interiority as we do the Compson narrators’, and we do not see Dilsey apart from her role as housekeeper for the family, even during the final section of the novel as she is watching after Benjy. As Charles Nilon argues about Dilsey and other women servants in Faulkner, “Each of these women identifies herself with a particular white family and its fortunes and works as hard as she can to protect the family and its honor” (101). Gaines notes this when people ask him whether or not he had Dilsey in mind when writing <em>The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman</em> (1971). He told John Lowe in 1994, “[T]he difference between Dilsey and Miss Jane Pittman is that Faulkner gets Dilsey...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":35190,"journal":{"name":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2022.a913485","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • “They got . . .”: Ernest J. Gaines’s Semiotic Reversal of William Faulkner
  • Matthew Teutsch

David Lionel Smith argues that rather than creating a hierar-chical reading of authors like William Faulkner and Ernest J. Gaines, which would ultimately place Gaines in a subordinate position since he follows Faulkner chronologically, “we need an egalitarian hermeneutic, which would insist upon locating both authors as respondents to and participants in an on-going cultural discourse” (59). Both Gaines and Faulkner participate in the “on-going cultural discourse” of race in the United States, and specifically in the South. Drawing upon Smith’s assertion, this article examines the ways that each author uses a specific, third-person pronoun to explore the semiotic connotations between that word and issues of race and segregation.

Throughout his career, Gaines commented on the influence that Faulkner had on his writing. In 1969, Gaines told Gregory Fitzgerald and Peter Marchant that for “A Long Day in November,” he got the style “from Faulkner and from Joyce” (13). Speaking with Fred Beauford in 1972, Gaines commented on the way that Faulkner made him listen to people talk: “[T]his man taught me how to listen to dialogue; he taught me how to leave out. You can say one word and if you say it right and build up to it and follow through, it can carry as much meaning as if you had used an entire sentence.” While Faulkner taught Gaines structure, style, and dialogue, the Louisiana author had “no interest in Faulkner’s philosophy,” and this is where Gaines’s response to and reworking of the Mississippian come into play (19).

Through his use of the third-person plural pronoun “they,” Gaines directly confronts “Faulkner’s philosophy,” using the semiotic connections of the word to point out the ways that language works to render individuals invisible and construct meaning. In “Discourse in the Novel,” Mikhail Bakhtin points out that literature calls for “dialogic penetration into the word,” which “opens up fresh aspects in the word [End Page 437] . . . which, since they were revealed by dialogic means, become more immediate to perception” (352). Thinking about specific words and the connotations they inherently bring to mind, we can explore the ways that Gaines deploys the word “they” throughout some of his works and consider these instances in relation to Faulkner’s description of Dilsey and her family in the appendix to The Sound and the Fury (1929), which first appeared in Malcolm Cowley’s 1946 The Portable Faulkner.

After extensively chronicling the history of the Compson family from 1699–1945 and relating what happened to the Compson characters after the end of the novel, Faulkner’s appendix relegates a sentence apiece for TP, Frony, Luster, and Dilsey. He introduces this section by writing, “And that was all. These others were not Compsons. They were black” (270). He concludes the appendix with the “infamous” two-word sentence for Dilsey: “They endured” (271). Through the use of “they,” Faulkner strips Dilsey of her individuality and creates an essentialist representation of his African American characters in the novel, all of which converge in the image of Dilsey Gibson. Through his use of the pronoun “they,” Gaines turns the referent around, focusing its gaze on the white community, presenting white people not as individuals but as a singular entity that maintains power through oppression, subjugation, and surveillance.

While Dilsey does endure the downfall of the Compson family, we do not see her interiority as we do the Compson narrators’, and we do not see Dilsey apart from her role as housekeeper for the family, even during the final section of the novel as she is watching after Benjy. As Charles Nilon argues about Dilsey and other women servants in Faulkner, “Each of these women identifies herself with a particular white family and its fortunes and works as hard as she can to protect the family and its honor” (101). Gaines notes this when people ask him whether or not he had Dilsey in mind when writing The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971). He told John Lowe in 1994, “[T]he difference between Dilsey and Miss Jane Pittman is that Faulkner gets Dilsey...

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“他们得到了……”:欧内斯特·j·盖恩斯对威廉·福克纳的符号学逆转
代替摘要,这里是内容的简短摘录:“他们得到了……”:马修·图茨大卫·莱昂内尔·史密斯认为,与其对威廉·福克纳和欧内斯特·j·盖恩斯这样的作家进行等级式的解读,因为盖恩斯按时间顺序追随福克纳,所以这种解读最终会把盖恩斯置于从属地位,不如“我们需要一种平等主义的解释学,这种解释学将坚持把两位作者都定位为正在进行的文化话语的回应者和参与者”(59)。盖恩斯和福克纳都参与了美国,特别是南方种族的“正在进行的文化话语”。根据史密斯的断言,本文考察了每位作者使用特定第三人称代词的方式,以探索该词与种族和隔离问题之间的符号学内涵。在他的整个职业生涯中,盖恩斯评论了福克纳对他写作的影响。1969年,盖恩斯告诉格雷戈里·菲茨杰拉德(Gregory Fitzgerald)和彼得·马尚(Peter Marchant),《十一月漫长的一天》的风格“来自福克纳和乔伊斯”(13)。1972年与弗雷德·博福德(Fred Beauford)交谈时,盖恩斯评论了福克纳让他倾听别人谈话的方式:“他教会了我如何倾听对话;他教会了我如何离开。你可以说一个词,如果你说对了,然后继续说下去,它的意思就像你用了一个完整的句子一样。”虽然福克纳教会了盖恩斯结构、风格和对话,但这位路易斯安那州的作家“对福克纳的哲学没有兴趣”,这就是盖恩斯对密西西比人的回应和改造发挥作用的地方(19)。通过使用第三人称复数代词“他们”,盖恩斯直接面对“福克纳的哲学”,利用这个词的符号学联系,指出语言如何使个人隐形,并构建意义。在《小说中的话语》中,米哈伊尔·巴赫金指出,文学需要“对世界的对话渗透”,这“打开了世界的新方面”。由于它们是通过对话的方式揭示出来的,因此对感知来说更直接”(352)。考虑到具体的词汇和它们固有的内涵,我们可以探索盖恩斯在他的一些作品中使用“他们”这个词的方式,并将这些例子与福克纳在《喧哗与骚动》(1929)附录中对迪尔西及其家人的描述联系起来,后者首次出现在马尔科姆·考利1946年的《便携福克纳》中。福克纳在附录中详尽地记录了康普生家族从1699年到1945年的历史,并叙述了康普生家族的人物在小说结尾后的遭遇。在附录中,福克纳为TP、弗朗尼、Luster和迪尔西分别留了一句话。他这样介绍这一部分:“这就是全部。这些人都不是康普生。他们是黑人”(270)。他在附录的结尾为迪尔西写了一句“臭名昭著的”两个字的句子:“他们忍受了”(271)。通过对“他们”的使用,福克纳剥离了迪尔西的个性,对小说中的非裔美国人人物进行了本质主义的再现,所有这些都汇聚在迪尔西·吉布森的形象上。通过对代词“他们”的使用,盖恩斯将所指物转了过来,将目光集中在白人社区上,将白人不是作为个体,而是作为一个通过压迫、征服和监视来维持权力的单一实体。虽然迪尔西确实忍受了康普生家族的垮台,但我们并没有像康普生叙述者那样看到她的内在,我们也没有看到迪尔西离开了她作为家庭管家的角色,即使在小说的最后一部分,她照看着本杰。正如查尔斯·尼隆(Charles Nilon)在福克纳(Faulkner)的作品中对迪尔西(Dilsey)和其他女仆的评论,“这些女性中的每一个都将自己与一个特定的白人家庭及其财富联系在一起,并尽其所能地努力工作,以保护家庭及其荣誉”(101)。当人们问盖恩斯在写《简·皮特曼小姐自传》(1971)时是否想到了迪尔西时,盖恩斯注意到了这一点。1994年,他告诉约翰·洛:“迪尔西和简·皮特曼小姐的区别在于,福克纳得到了迪尔西……
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来源期刊
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory
CiteScore
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期刊介绍: Founded in 1948, the Mississippi Quarterly is a refereed, scholarly journal dedicated to the life and culture of the American South, past and present. The journal is published quarterly by the College of Arts and Sciences of Mississippi State University.
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Digitizing Faulkner: Yoknapatawpha in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Theresa M. Towner (review) Of Gaines and Genre: Plotting the Racial Borders in Southern Louisiana William Faulkner and Mortality: A Fine Dead Sound by Ahmed Honeini (review) The Falkners and the Methodist Church in Oxford, Mississippi "Even in a Place of Sorrow, Even in a Place of Joy": Intersections of Blackness and Southernness in the Works of bell hooks and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
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