WEBVTT

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Much of the recent
work on the DY side

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has been about those things
that the scholars who have read

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a lot of Faulkner find useful.

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But I'd like to
spend a bit of time

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demonstrating how those same
features could be useful

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to, for example, a teacher who
only has time to give students

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a single Faulkner story,
such as "Dry September."

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You can access the primary map
for "Dry September" on the DY

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site here.

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You'll find the cover for "Dry
September" on the bookshelf

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on the main site page, which
I've surrounded in red.

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When you click on
that link, you'll

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find the site map, which
is stuffed with information

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about the story's characters,
events, and locations,

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and which offers a
lot of ways to put

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those pieces in conversation
with one another.

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You'll also find wonderful
secondary materials, including

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manuscript images and
related audio clips

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from Faulkner's stint at
the University of Virginia.

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But as I think about
these scholarly riches,

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I also think of
one of my recurring

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nightmares as a teacher--

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that a student will come to me
after reading a story like "Dry

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September" and say, "We talked
about the story in class,

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but I don't see any mention
of lynching anywhere

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in the story."

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In today's world,
much of the way people

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build meaning is by
skimming for key terms

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rather than for propositions
or arguments, much less

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nuance or euphemism.

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In many of his stories,
Faulkner does not

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offer the legal term
lynching that triggers

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recognition in a modern reader.

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And his texts elude the
modern text search function

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on which both students
and indeed researchers

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have come to rely.

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The term lynch does
not appear anywhere

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in the story "Dry September."

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Compare that with Richard
Wright's Uncle Tom's Children

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also published in the
1930s, in which lynching

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is named repeatedly, bursting
out of characters' mouths

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with alarming frequency as they
name the threat that shapes

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their actions at every turn.

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Since the term "lynch"
does not appear anywhere

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in Faulkner's "Dry
September," how

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might we address both problems
raised by that absence?

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The students need to see
where the story points

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to lynching without resorting
to a dreaded plot summary,

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and also the further
question-- why

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doesn't Faulkner just say it?

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Here I think we have a
chance to show students

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where and how scholars build
interpretive work using

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the keywords that have
been created by the DY team

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and that you can access at
the top of the DY home page

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under Search and Events.

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To show a student where
Faulkner's characters discuss

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what they're doing without
using the term lynching,

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you can flip back a
few pages in the story.

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But you can also see
where the DY team has

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flagged lynching as a focus.

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Those of you who are familiar
with the Library of Congress

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subject headings will laugh.

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Yes, this is something of a high
tech return to search options

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that are cultivated by people
with expertise in this area.

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For our students, however,
such an idea is a novelty.

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Their university's
default for their library

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is probably a
Google-like search bar.

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But a library is not a bad
comparison for what DY offers.

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DY keywords help
cultivate, direct,

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and organize the
interests of its users

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rather than offer shortcuts
or replacements for Faulkner.

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If you select "Dry
September" from the text list

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under the search
function and put "lynch"

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in the keyword search,
you'll find three places

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where the team has flagged
lynching as a subject.

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Though lynching as a
theme permeates the text,

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we want to teach students where
and how such themes emerge.

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Here, the DY database points us
back to three specific moments

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in the text marked by the page
numbers and the first few words

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of the event on that page.

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Breaking it down into
more manageable pieces,

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the site yet still forces
readers to go back to the text.

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If we look up the
three moments indicated

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by the search results, we get
these references to lynching.

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When we put these
articulations of their action

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alongside one another, we
see the blatant obfuscation

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of the characters'
true actions--

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we're just going to talk to
them a little, that's all--

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expressed by men who had earlier
dismissed any need for talk.

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Then the violence
is ritualized--

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it can't be done here.

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And finally, the narrative
circles back to the event

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after it occurs,
confirming the lynching

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through the absence of the man,
one of Faulkner's many math

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games.

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There's great critical
work on this story,

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but I'm focusing
primarily on the way

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that readers may encounter
this text for the first time

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and then the means by
which we can return to it,

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looking again, building a
case for a new understanding

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of where and how lynching
emerges within the narrative

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even if we establish a textual
foundation for the subject

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of lynching in the story.

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Now that we've done that,
from these three instances,

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we still have to grapple
with the sliding references

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by the characters
and the silence

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of the narrator on this front.

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Why doesn't he just
say it explicitly?

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We would search in vain for
the term lynching in this text.

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But after helping
students see where

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the characters and the narrator
glance off the subject,

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we might then
productively investigate

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how Faulkner's indirect
language redirects our attention

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from the act of lynching to the
development of the lynch mob

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itself.

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Even if you only read "Dry
September" with your students,

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you could draw on the DY site
and its wealth of keywords

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to develop a more
robust body of evidence

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about the kind of language
that Faulkner's characters use

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for lynching, adding to the
three places highlighted

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in "Dry September."

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We return to the Search page and
leave the text option blank so

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that it will search all
the text in our database.

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You will get a
lengthy list of places

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where our editors
have highlighted

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lynching within his fictions.

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Rather than think of it
as an exhaustive list,

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consider instead that
it's where lynching

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rose to the surface
of the reading,

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where a seemingly ever present
threat of lynching newly

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shapes action or feeling
in a given scene.

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Your results page will get
lengthy, something like this.

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If you or your
students, however,

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hunt up some of these references
within the books themselves,

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we'll get something of a
linguistic history of lynching

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and Faulkner.

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Here are a few of the
references I chased down.

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In "Pantaloon in
Black," the short story,

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there is the complete
elision of the event.

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After it was over,
it didn't take long.

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They found the prisoner
on the following day.

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In the novel Sanctuary, we
see the self-justification

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and an explicit
link between rape

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and the burning alive of
a man and the preservation

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of white women.

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In Light in August, Faulkner
lingers on the mood--

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excitement-- before telling
us that it's a lynching so

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that the social
role of the event

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is clear no matter what
our horror as readers.

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And then in Intruder
in the Dust,

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we see the anticipation
of a lynching that

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will attempt to reduce Lucas
Beauchamp to a category

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that the white
characters can stand.

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Although I am as a teacher
generally perfectly

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happy to simply lock
my students in a room

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with a book, any text,
Digital Yoknapatawpha

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offers me tools that help me
better show my students where

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major issues appear, how
and why scholars weigh

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the evidence of a given text,
and how an author like Faulkner

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redirects our attention
from the horror

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of the event to the
cultivation of a mob

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mentality within a community.

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On the DY site, we already
have several resources

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mapping out
intertextual relations

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between A Rose for
Emily, As I Lay

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Dying, The Sound and the Fury,
Absalom Absalom!, and more.

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There are a lot of
ways the site is

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fruitful for both effective
teaching of a single text

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and for pointing beyond
that text to Faulkner's

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work as a whole and
life in Mississippi

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and elsewhere
outside his fiction.

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