This study of William Faulkner’s The Hamlet (1940) offers

* extensive discussions of the textual history of the work,

* a survey of previous criticism,

* an understanding of the book as a novel and not a loose collection of revised stories.

* a chapter-by-chapter reading based on modern theories of how we read

* in the midst of it all is the community of Frenchman’s Bend – the “little lost village” – virtually a central character in the novel as it sees its stable life threatened by the invasion of the Snopeses...

From the conclusion:

… in the darkness of his tales there is also a magic force, inexplicable, almost inaudible or inaccessible, perhaps, a voice above and beyond the ways of this world and the sins of the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters, a voice insistent, troubled, and still in good faith, because there is no doubt that despite influences, sources, intertextual dependency, internal interrelatedness, Faulkner’s writing has one source, a rare one, seldom acknowledged, seldom understood: the generosity of the human spirit at its best and fullest. No book demonstrates this more fully than The Hamlet.


Table of contents

Introduction 9

I Preparing to Read The Hamlet 19

Chapter 1: Snopes Material Before the Writing

of The Hamlet 21

Chapter 2: The Text of The Hamlet: Revisions,

Inclusions, Expansions 38

Chapter 3: Early Reactions to and Readings

of the Novel: 1940–1970 67

Chapter 4: More Recent Readings of

The Hamlet: New Trends in Criticism 99


II Reading “Book One—Flem” 121

Chapter 5: The World of Frenchman’s Bend 123

Chapter 6: A Tall-Tale of Life Remembered 139

Chapter 7: The Usurpation of an Heirship 156


III Reading “Book Two—Eula” 175

Chapter 8: By Love Possessed 177

Chapter 9: A Terrible Waste 191


IV Reading “Book Three—The Long Summer” 205

Chapter 10: Summer Days in Yoknapatawpha

County 207

Chapter 11: Houston vs. Snopes—Murder

and Concealment 223


V Reading Book Four—“The Peasants” 243

Chapter 12: Flem Snopes and the

Spotted Horses 245

Chapter 13: Ratliff’s Final Defeat? 276


Conclusion: “And That Was All.” 295


Bibliography 315


Index of names and titles 319


ISBN 978-82-7099-690-2, 322 pp., hardcover
Format: 13,5x22,5 cm, weight 0,6 kg, year of publication 2012, language: English