Playing Monopoly with Mr. Faulkner

Nutt Auditorium

This talk revolves around two main issues: the connections between slaves and land; and the ideas of gambling and reparation. It looking at those questions, it invokes topology - the study of shapes - looking at times quite literally at the narrative-creating shapes in Faulkner's texts, and especially the contrast between the square (Sutpen's Hundred; Lucas's postage stamp of property; the jail cell; the county line) and the oval (looped run, circuit, race track). One of its emblems, for reasons that will be spelled out in the talk, is the Monopoly board. My textual focus will include Absalom, Absalom!, Go Down Moses, Intruder in the Dust and The Reivers.