"All mixed up in it" : En intersektionell läsning av William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying och Sanctuary

Sammanfattning:

This thesis is an intersectional reading of William Faulkner’s novels The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930)and Sanctuary (1931). This paper employs theories of masculinity and queer theory to examine the masculinities in the novels and their connection to blackness. It proceeds from Judith Butler’s book Bodies that Matter. The thesis focuses on the mixture of race, class, gender and sexuality in the novels. I claim that race sometimes is a mask for gender, class and sexuality in these texts. I argue that certain white characters are depicted as Afro-Americans because of their unmanly behavior and/or queer sexuality or low class. For masculinity theory I have used Jørgen Lorentzen and Claes Ekenstam’s concept of manly and unmanly, described in the anthology Män i Norden Manlighet och modernitet 1840-1940. I have also used Craig Thompson Friend’s Southern Masculinity: Perspectives on manhood in the South since Reconstruction and WJ Cash’s The Mind of the South. For the queer theory, I have used Judith Butler’s theories described in Gendertrouble and Bodies that Matter.