Panel. Houses of Slavery

Location

Nutt Auditorium

Start Date

24-7-2018 11:00 AM

Description

  • Faulkner, Slavery, and the University of Mississippi / W. Ralph Eubanks, University of Mississippi
    Payment records from the 1840s in the archives of the University of Mississippi indicate that Robert Sheegog, the previous owner of Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, along with other local slave owners, loaned slaves to the University that were used for its construction. The direct link between Faulkner’s Rowan Oak and a group of slaves that built the University of Mississippi evokes questions about how Faulkner constructed the relationship between Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom!, a relationship that has the University of Mississippi as a backdrop. This paper explores the overlapping narrative between Absalom, Absalom! and Rowan Oak’s connection with the slaves who helped build the University of Mississippi. Whether or not Faulkner had knowledge of the connections between the University of Mississippi, Rowan Oak, and slavery, this new narrative twist makes us look at this relationship—as well as its historical context—in a new light.
  • From Faulkner's Clytie to Toni Morrison's Circe: Harrowing the Hell of Slavery / Anne MacMaster, Millsaps College
    A rotting mansion on the outskirts of town; an aging care-taker with a name out of Greek mythology; a long-ago murder unsolved but unforgotten; a family secret rooted in the days of slavery; a person long thought dead alive inside the ruins: if these motifs sound like Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! they also fit Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Morrison’s use of these Gothic and mythic motifs is at once homage and rival to Faulkner’s own. Reading these novels side by side sheds new light on the treatment of slavery in both. This paper focuses especially on Faulkner’s Clytie and Morrison’s Circe as paradoxical characters, both gatekeepers at the big house and guardians of the family past.
  • Red Man’s Burden: Steamboats & Slavery in the Wilderness / Michael Gleason, Millsaps College
    To illustrate the corrosive influence of white society upon Native Americans, the article explores Faulkner’s parallels between “Big House” and steamboat. Close readings show how Faulkner indicts European materialism among the Chickasaws; technology and slavery disrupt family, culture, and economy. In “Red Leaves” and “A Justice,” the rotting steamboat, pointlessly ornate and as unnatural as a beached whale, serves as mansion for the ruthless Doom, the feckless Issetibbeha, and finally his spoiled son Moketubbe; it is a complex mockery of a society that has no business in the wilderness. In contrast, the slave quarters, “neat with whitewash, of baked soft brick,” achieve a limited and somber dignity. The argument concludes that Faulkner’s art raises stereotype to archetype; while the homes and houses of master and slave inevitably echo their relative positions of power, Faulkner’s portrayal produces a moving and persuasive vision of our flawed, interdependent, and precarious humanity.

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Jul 24th, 11:00 AM

Panel. Houses of Slavery

Nutt Auditorium

  • Faulkner, Slavery, and the University of Mississippi / W. Ralph Eubanks, University of Mississippi
    Payment records from the 1840s in the archives of the University of Mississippi indicate that Robert Sheegog, the previous owner of Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, along with other local slave owners, loaned slaves to the University that were used for its construction. The direct link between Faulkner’s Rowan Oak and a group of slaves that built the University of Mississippi evokes questions about how Faulkner constructed the relationship between Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen in Absalom, Absalom!, a relationship that has the University of Mississippi as a backdrop. This paper explores the overlapping narrative between Absalom, Absalom! and Rowan Oak’s connection with the slaves who helped build the University of Mississippi. Whether or not Faulkner had knowledge of the connections between the University of Mississippi, Rowan Oak, and slavery, this new narrative twist makes us look at this relationship—as well as its historical context—in a new light.
  • From Faulkner's Clytie to Toni Morrison's Circe: Harrowing the Hell of Slavery / Anne MacMaster, Millsaps College
    A rotting mansion on the outskirts of town; an aging care-taker with a name out of Greek mythology; a long-ago murder unsolved but unforgotten; a family secret rooted in the days of slavery; a person long thought dead alive inside the ruins: if these motifs sound like Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! they also fit Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Morrison’s use of these Gothic and mythic motifs is at once homage and rival to Faulkner’s own. Reading these novels side by side sheds new light on the treatment of slavery in both. This paper focuses especially on Faulkner’s Clytie and Morrison’s Circe as paradoxical characters, both gatekeepers at the big house and guardians of the family past.
  • Red Man’s Burden: Steamboats & Slavery in the Wilderness / Michael Gleason, Millsaps College
    To illustrate the corrosive influence of white society upon Native Americans, the article explores Faulkner’s parallels between “Big House” and steamboat. Close readings show how Faulkner indicts European materialism among the Chickasaws; technology and slavery disrupt family, culture, and economy. In “Red Leaves” and “A Justice,” the rotting steamboat, pointlessly ornate and as unnatural as a beached whale, serves as mansion for the ruthless Doom, the feckless Issetibbeha, and finally his spoiled son Moketubbe; it is a complex mockery of a society that has no business in the wilderness. In contrast, the slave quarters, “neat with whitewash, of baked soft brick,” achieve a limited and somber dignity. The argument concludes that Faulkner’s art raises stereotype to archetype; while the homes and houses of master and slave inevitably echo their relative positions of power, Faulkner’s portrayal produces a moving and persuasive vision of our flawed, interdependent, and precarious humanity.