 | Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition Subjects: Faulkner William 1897–1962 -- Criticism and interpretation; Welty Eudora 1909–2001 -- Criticism and interpretation; Literature and society -- Southern States -- History -- 20th century; Women and literature -- Southern States -- History -- 20th centur; As one of the preeminent scholars of southern literature, Noel Polk has delivered lectures, written journal articles and essays, and discussed the rich legacy of the South's literary heritage around the world for over three decades. His work on William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Walker Percy, and other writers is incisive and groundbreaking. His essays in Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition maintain an abiding interest in Polk's major area of literary study: the relationship between the smaller units of construction in a literary work and the work's larger themes. The analysis of this interplay between commas and dashes, curious occlusions, passages, and characters who have often gone unnoticed in the critical discourse--the bricks and mortar, as it were--and a work's grand design is a crucial aspect of Polk's scholarship. Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition collects Polk's essays from the late-1970s to 2005. Featuring an introduction that places Faulkner and Welty at the center of the South's literary heritage, the volume asks useful, probing questions about southern literature and provides insightful analysis. Noel Polk is professor of English at Mississippi State University and editor of the Mississippi Quarterly . From 1981 to 2006, he edited the Library of America's complete edition of William Faulkner's novels. He is the author of Outside the Southern Myth; Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner; and Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work . Noel Polk was born in 1943. He was a professor, literary scholar, critic and poet. He was Emeritus Professor of English at Mississippi State University and editor of the Mississippi Quarterly. Polk was best known for his editorial and critical work on William Faulkner and his critical work on Eudora Welty. He co-edited five volumes of Faulkner¿s novels with biographer Joseph Blotner for The Library of America. He passed away in 2012 at his home in Jackson Mississippi. (Bowker Author Biography) |
