Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Games of Property
ISBN: 9780822384458
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Duke University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Law in literature.; Race in literature.; Sex role in literature.; Property in literature.; African American women in literature.;

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.

Thadious M. Davis is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman's Life Unveiled and Faulkner's "Negro": Art and the Southern Context. She is the coeditor of Satire or Evasion?: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn, published by Duke University Press.