A HISTORICIST CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY CONSTRUAL IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST
A HISTORICIST CRITIQUE OF IDENTITY CONSTRUAL IN WILLIAM FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I analyse the character Joanna Burden of Faulkner’s Light in August in keeping with the recuperative agenda of new historicist readings. The rare occasions on which she speaks foreground a series of ideological issues pivoting on her identity and adduce evidence of her agency in the signifying processes which assign her to the position of ‘white female victim.’ My aim is to unpack a body of assumptions which condition readers to misread the book’s world in keeping with much unexamined ideology, past and present. I perform a historicist reading of Joanna through the discursive practices at work in the novel in order to interrogate the validity of standard interpretations of her character.

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