An Ethic of Mourning: The Presence of Animals and Death in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing
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This essay examines William Faulkner’s classic As I Lay Dying (1930) with Jesmyn Ward’s National Book Award-winning contemporary novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) to explore how Ward, joining in the Mississippi writers’ literary heritage, both extends and rewrites Faulkner’s narrative about death. Although critics have begun to acknowledge connections between Faulkner and Ward, not enough attention has been given yet to the intertextuality of As I Lay Dying and Sing, Unburied, Sing. In light of the recent turn to animals in cultural and literary texts, this essay focuses on the presence of animals in the two novels to demonstrate that the animals featured in the novels allude to the distinct ways these texts deal with death and reveal how the dead assert their presence. In both novels, the dead, conflated with nonhuman animals, insist on being sensed, rupturing the modern dichotomy between human and animal, life and death. While As I Lay Dying represents an abrupt end to admitting the presence of the dead with a ritual of burial, Ward’s novel, however, firmly resists the modern impulse to “bury” the unburied and move on. Ultimately, this essay argues that Ward’s Sing, Unburied Sing revises Faulkner’s narrative of a failed mourning to provide an alternative ethic of mourning—mourning that does not end with a burial but rather begins with a failure to bury the dead.
Abstract
This essay examines William Faulkner’s classic As I Lay Dying (1930) with Jesmyn Ward’s National Book Award-winning contemporary novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) to explore how Ward, joining in the Mississippi writers’ literary heritage, both extends and rewrites Faulkner’s narrative about death. Although critics have begun to acknowledge connections between Faulkner and Ward, not enough attention has been given yet to the intertextuality of As I Lay Dying and Sing, Unburied, Sing. In light of the recent turn to animals in cultural and literary texts, this essay focuses on the presence of animals in the two novels to demonstrate that the animals featured in the novels allude to the distinct ways these texts deal with death and reveal how the dead assert their presence. In both novels, the dead, conflated with nonhuman animals, insist on being sensed, rupturing the modern dichotomy between human and animal, life and death. While As I Lay Dying represents an abrupt end to admitting the presence of the dead with a ritual of burial, Ward’s novel, however, firmly resists the modern impulse to “bury” the unburied and move on. Ultimately, this essay argues that Ward’s Sing, Unburied Sing revises Faulkner’s narrative of a failed mourning to provide an alternative ethic of mourning—mourning that does not end with a burial but rather begins with a failure to bury the dead.
참고문헌 (24)
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