“The Poet's Voice” : Dialogicity and Cultural Regeneration in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Abstract

Faulkner's oeuvre took shape in and through his continual, conflictive interaction with Southern culture and heritage. This article argues that Faulkner's works are conceived as correctives to the shortcomings of his cultural environment. Through a close reading of Absalom, Absalom!, a conception of unconstrained communication and diversity comparable to Bakhtin's ‘dialogicity’ is identified as the node at which culture and text interconnect on several levels. In a first step, the article outlines the three levels of dialogic communication – linguistic, discursive, and epistemological – at work in Faulkner's oeuvre. In a second step, it draws on functional models of literature from the areas of narratology and cultural ecology to analyze how dialogicity is inscribed into the very structure of Absalom, Absalom! to make it a regenerative contribution to Southern public discourse.