Considering that he worked a stint as a screenwriter, it will come as little
surprise that Faulkner has often been called the most cinematic of novelists.
Faulkner's novels were produced in the same high period as the films of
classical Hollywood, a reason itself for considering his work alongside this
dominant form. Beyond their era, though, Faulkner's novels-or the ways in
which they ask readers to see as well as feel his world-have much in common
with film. That Faulkner was aware of film and that his novels' own "thinking"
betrays his profound sense of the medium and its effects broadens the contexts
in which he can be considered.
In a range of approaches, the contributors consider Faulkner's career as a
scenarist and collaborator in Hollywood, the ways his screenplay work and
the adaptations of his fiction informed his literary writing, and how Faulkner's
craft anticipates, intersects with, or reflects upon changes in cultural history
across the lifespan of cinema.
Drawing on film history, critical theory, archival studies of Faulkner's screenplays
and scholarship about his work in Hollywood, the nine essays show a
keen awareness of literary modernism and its relation to film.
Peter Lurie is associate professor of English and film studies at the University
of Richmond. He is the author of Vision's Immanence: Faulkner, Film, and the
Popular Imagination and has published numerous articles on Faulkner and
film.
Ann J. Abadie is associate director emerita of the Center for the Study of
Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and the coeditor of numerous
volumes in the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series.
