William Faulkner: Six Decades of Criticism

by Linda Wagner-Martin (Editor), Patrick A. Smith

Few twentieth-century writers are as revered as William Faulkner. This collection brings together the best literary criticism on Faulkner from the last six decades, detailing the imaginative and passionate responses to his still-controversial novels. By focusing on the criticism rather than the works, Linda Wagner-Martin shows the primary directions in Faulkner’s influence on critics, writers, and students of American literature today. This invaluable volume reveals the patterns of change in literary criticism over time, while exploring the various critical streams—language theory, feminism, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis—that have elevated Faulkner’s work to the highest rank of the American literary pantheon.

Genres: Literary Criticism

421 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1973

About the author

Linda Wagner-Martin is the Frank Borden Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature Emerita at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Over a teaching career spanning 53 years, she taught at Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and UNC, while authoring and editing more than 55 books. Her work includes biographies of major literary figures such as Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou, along with studies like A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present and The Routledge Introduction to American Postmodernism. After retiring in 2011, she continued publishing extensively. Wagner-Martin’s contributions have earned her prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Service to American Literature, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute. She holds BA, BS, MA, and PhD degrees from Bowling Green State University, where she graduated magna cum laude with majors in English and minors in American History.