Date of Award
12-2024
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts, BA
School
CAS
Department
English Department
Faculty Advisor
Quentin Miller
Second Advisor
Katy Lasdow
Abstract
An era of literary and artistic experimentation known as Modernism began in the 1920s allowing authors to reinterpret history and society. American Modernist authors William Faulkner and Jean Toomer used a variety of innovative literary techniques to depict post-Civil War Reconstruction (1864-1877) and its aftermath. Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! and Toomer’s Cane examine themes of race, violence, and the Lost Cause by manipulating time and perspective, shifting genres, and introducing new sentence structures. This article situates these novels alongside contemporary historical monographs and articles including works by Eric Foner, Deborah Gray White, Joe William Trotter Jr., and David Blight to demonstrate how Faulkner and Toomer’s works, founded on literary experimentation, align with arguments and observations found in recent historiography of Reconstruction. This interdisciplinary approach allows readers to understand how Modernists’ narrative techniques created new outlets for fiction writers to interact with the past and the society in which they were publishing.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Cattie, Jack, "Reconstructing Modernism: How Literary Experimentation Created Outlets for Faulkner and Toomer to Reinterpret the American South’s History" (2024). Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects. 34.
https://dc.suffolk.edu/undergrad/34
Included in
Literature in English, North America Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons