French Literature Reviews - 2026

William Faulkner: An Economy of Complex Words
History, Politics and Society

William Faulkner:
An Economy of Complex Words
Richard Godden Princeton University Press 264 pp.

In William Faulkner, Richard Godden traces how the novelist's late fiction echoes the economic and racial traumas of the South's delayed modernization in the mid-entieth century. As the New Deal rapidly accelerated the long-term shift from tenant farming to modern agriculture, many African Americans were driven from the land and forced to migrate north. At the same time, white landowners exchanged dependency on black labor for dependency on northern capital. Combining powerful close readings of The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses, and A Fable with an examination of southern economic history from the 1930s to the 1950s, Godden shows how the novels' literary complexities--from their narrative structures down to their smallest verbal emphases--reflect and refract the period's economic complexities. By demonstrating the interrelation of literary forms and economic systems, the book describes, in effect, the poetics of an economy.

Original in the way it brings together close reading and historical context, William Faulkner offers innovative interpretations of late Faulkner and makes a unique contribution to the understanding of the relation between literature and history.

Richard Godden teaches American literature in the Department of American Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Fictions of Labor: William Faulkner and the South's Long Revolution and Fictions of Capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer.

(Information provided by the publisher)

This study belongs to the broader tradition of materialist literary criticism, which examines how socio-economic conditions shape imaginative writing. During the mid-twentieth century, the American South underwent profound structural changes, moving away from an agrarian order rooted in tenant farming toward modern agricultural capitalism. Scholars in American studies and cultural history frequently investigate how such systemic shifts register within regional literature, treating texts as sites where historical tensions are formally articulated.

Readers interested in the intersections of American literary history, southern studies, and materialist criticism may find this volume relevant. Richard Godden combines close readings of works such as The Hamlet, Go Down, Moses, and A Fable with historical analysis of the region from the 1930s to the 1950s. The book traces how late fiction echoes the economic and racial traumas of the South's delayed modernization, examining the shift from tenant farming to modern agriculture, the displacement of African American laborers, and the transition from labor dependency to northern capital.