Hope from Hopelessness: Finding Contemporary Southern Literature through Anne Tyler’s Use of The Sound and the Fury

Amy M. Elliott, University of Connecticut - Storrs

Abstract

Critical debate focuses on the trend of Southern writers and the classification of their work within the tradition of Southern literature. One side of the argument supports contemporary writers as part of the Southern literary tradition. That is, it proposes that contemporary Southern writers continue to write Southern literature not by writing with the same style and magnitude as Faulkner and Warren, but by basing their writing on this tradition and modernizing it. An excellent example lies in Anne Tyler’s use of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury as a foundation for her Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. Through characterization and structure Tyler builds on traditional Southern literature to create contemporary Southern literature. By borrowing from Faulkner’s characterization of the Compson family, as each of the Tulls align with an equivocal Compson, and through her structure, which mimics Faulkner’s, Tyler continues to write in the Southern literary tradition. However, as much as Tyler’s characters align with Faulkner’s, it is precisely the differences in the characters, constructiveness and hope opposed to Faulkner’s destruction and hopelessness, that make Tyler’s work a piece of contemporary Southern literature.