Humor, Fantasy, and Myth: Dramatic Marginalized Voices and Mississippi’s America
Abstract
In discussing his adaptation of William Faulkner’s work, Horton Foote once pointed out: “When I first began to dramatize Faulkner almost twenty years ago, the South was still a remote, exotic region to many people in America. Although there had been critical evaluations of Faulkner’s novels and stories beginning with Cowley’s Portable Faulkner, I still felt that here was material only relatively few had discovered.”2 Despite the multiple portraits and explorations of Mississippi that have already appeared in literature and criticism, Mississippi remains a site of endless fascination. Reduced in the popular imagination to a state stricken by poverty, racism, and ignorance, the stories that emanate from the state by authors and scholars continue to reveal the depth and complexity of a state more representative of the United States than many are willing to admit. Even Faulkner felt compelled to return to The Sound and the Fury (1929) to include a “Compson Appendix” in 1945. The return to Mississippi, specifically throughout the twentieth century, yielded fresh insights, even when the stories revisited the mourning of the Old South before the Civil War.
Publication Title
A Literary History of Mississippi
Recommended Citation
Tucker, T. (2017). Humor, Fantasy, and Myth: Dramatic Marginalized Voices and Mississippi’s America. A Literary History of Mississippi, 211-227. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/facpub2/1824
