Using Digital Yoknapatawpha to Compare Interpretive Lenses for As I Lay Dying
Erin Penner
Faulkner's 1930 novel As I Lay Dying moves mostly chronologically through the story of the Bundrens' journey to Jefferson. But Faulkner stitches that story together from a variety of narrators, nearly all of whom slide into memories of past events even as his story marches forward in the present. How do we build a solid interpretation on such unstable ground?
Digital Yoknapatawpha can help us recognize, organize, and evaluate different approaches to As I Lay Dying. In the trio of videos below, I use the nine identified DY tools and resources to compare interpretive lenses that we might apply to Faulkner's novel. All of the techniques I demonstrate can be used for the other Yoknapatawpha fictions analyzed in DY.
Video 1: Mapping (0:00 - 2:12):
Timelines
Heatmaps
Video 2: Visualizations and Searches (0:00 - 4:59):
Narrative Analysis
Intertextual Location Data
Keywords
Video 3: Cultural Context (0:00 - 2:36):
Photographs
Audio Clips
Manuscripts
Faulkner's Cemeteries
Citing this source:
Erin Penner, "Using Digital Yoknapatawpha to Compare Interpretive Lenses for As I Lay Dying." Digital Yoknapatawpha, University of Virginia, http://faulkner.iath.virginia.edu/family/videos-penneraild.php (Date added to project: 2020)