American Studies in Review

Abstract: This essay reviews Don H. Doyle's Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha and Edouard Glissant's Faulkner Mississippi. Doyle's book is a detailed social history of Lafayette County, the county in Northern Mississippi on which Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha was based, and I argue that he illustrates the ways in which fiction and history can assist each other in the search for truth. Glissant's book is more dense and philosophical, and I offer an interpretation of his claim that Faulkner's fiction works through “deferred revelation,” a literary process that is inseparable from social and cultural Creolization. I argue that Glissant's reading of Faulkner suggests possible ways in which to re-vision literary modernism. Together, the two books underscore the historical and philosophical significance and value of Faulkner's work.