Oxford University, England (Location Key)

Faulkner's hometown in Mississippi was named 'Oxford' as part of a campaign by three early inhabitants to make it the site of a college. The original 'Oxford,' of course, is in England, and is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. Horace Benbow attends that Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. The brief account of the place and his life there in Flags in the Dust is very idyllic, emphasizing its cloisteral seclusion from "the world's noises" (176). In "Ad Astra" a character named Bland - the only other Faulkner character to go to England's Oxford - also attend as a Rhodes Scholar. That story is set in France, and the only detail it provides about Oxford University is that while he was there Bland heard the Indian subadar speak "before the Union" (409); the prestigious Oxford Union debating society was founded in 1823.