Games of Property: Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

by Thadious M. Davis

In Games of Property, distinguished critic Thadious M. Davis provides a dazzling new interpretation of William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Davis argues that in its unrelenting attention to issues related to the ownership of land and people, Go Down, Moses ranks among Faulkner’s finest and most accomplished works. Bringing together law, social history, game theory, and feminist critiques, she shows that the book is unified by games—fox hunting, gambling with cards and dice, racing—and, like the law, games are rule-dependent forms of social control and commentary. She illuminates the dual focus in Go Down, Moses on property and ownership on the one hand and on masculine sport and social ritual on the other. Games of Property is a masterful contribution to understandings of Faulkner’s fiction and the power and scope of property law.

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 7, 2003

About the author

Her poetry has been published in various journals and anthologies in the USA, including Obsidian, Pushcart Prize IV: Best of the Small Presses (ed. Bill Henderson, 1979) and Black Sister: Poetry by Black American Women, 1746-1980 (ed. Erlene Stetson, 1981) and is collected in Emergence. In the 1980s she co-edited (with Trudier Harris) several volumes of the Dictionary of Literary Biography dealing with African-American writers.

(from Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby)