Faulkner from within: Destructive and Generative Being in the Novels of William Faulkner

Faulkner from Within: Destructive and Generative Being in the Novels of William Faulkner is the culmination of William H. Rueckert's lifetime of study of this great American novelist. Rueckert tracks Faulkner's development as a novelist through eighteen novels-ranging from Flags in the Dust to The Reivers-to show the turn in Faulkner from destructive to generative being, from tragedy to comedy, from pollution to purification and redemption. At the heart of Faulkner from Within is Rueckert's sustained treatment of Go Down, Moses, a turning point in Faulkner's career away from the destructive selves of the earlier novels and-as first manifest in Ike McCaslin-toward the generative selves of his later work. Faulkner from Within is a wide-ranging, beautifully written appreciation and analysis of the imaginative life of a great American author and his complex work.

William H. Rueckert has authored or edited numerous groundbreaking books and articles. They include the landmark study, Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations (1963, 1982), Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924-1966 (1969), and Encounters with Kenneth Burke (1994). He is the editor of Letters from Kenneth Burke to William H. Rueckert, 1959-1987 (2003, Parlor Press) and Burke's Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950-1955 (2004, Parlor Press). With Angelo Bonadonna, he is the editor of Burke's On Human Nature, A Gathering While Everything Flows, 1967-1984. He is also the author of Glenway Wescott (1965). His essays include the often-cited "Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism."