William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner (English: William Cuthbert Faulkner, September 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962), American novelist, poet and playwright, is one of the most influential writers in the history of American literature and a representative figure of stream-of-consciousness literature in the United States. In his creative career of more than 40 years, he wrote 19 novels, 125 short stories, 20 movie scripts, and one drama, among which the Yoknapatawpha series of novels are representative. In 1950, he won the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature for his "powerful and artistically unparalleled contribution to contemporary American fiction." Faulkner was born in a declining manor family in New Albany, Mississippi. When he was 5 years old, his family moved to Oxford in the same state, and he spent most of his life in this small town. He loved reading since he was a child, but he did not receive much formal education. He only spent more than a year at the University of Mississippi. He served in the Royal Air Force as a youth but did not officially participate in the war, and then briefly traveled to Europe. He started writing as a career in the late 1920s. In the 1930s, he wrote movie scripts for Hollywood to solve economic problems. His works had little influence at home at first and often failed to sell, but they attracted the attention of some young writers in Europe. In 1946, the 19-volume "Pocket Collection of Faulkner" edited by Malcolm Cowley was published, and Faulkner was widely recognized by critics. The style of Faulkner's works is varied, and the plots are often organized not according to the order of time and space. People and people, things and things, the past and the present are compared, creating infinite possibilities of meaning. The techniques of inner monologue and stream of consciousness are also widely used in his novels. In addition, he often consciously associates his works with religion and mythology, and uses a lot of symbols and metaphors. These works are both realistic and rich in imagination, and contain both pessimism and heroic passion. While describing the history of the American South, he expressed the alienation and loneliness of modern people, advocated tolerance, understanding and sympathy, and ultimately achieved human equality.