The inaugural Howry Lecture in Faulkner Studies commenced virtually Monday night. An annual event, the Howry Lectures in Faulkner Studies will bring a distinguished Faulkner scholar to the heart of Yoknapatawpha County every year to present the university, Oxford and Lafayette County communities with a lecture on one of the South’s most prolific writers and his works.
Barbara Ladd, the inaugural Howry Lecturer and professor of English at Emory University, delivered a riveting and relevant lecture entitled “Who is Charles Bon? Reading Race in Faulkner in the 21st Century.” “Absalom, Absalom!,” the novel around which her discussion was centered, turns 85 years old today.
The lectures came about when the University of Mississippi English Department faculty were directed to think of ways to use a surplus of money from an endowment given to the department. Wanting to honor the legacy of the donors and create something that added to the wide breadth of resources available to Faulkner enthusiasts and scholars in Oxford, the Howry Lecture in Faulkner Studies was created.
Jay Watson, Distinguished Professor of English and Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies, sees the annual lecture as an opportunity for the community to realize and engage with the continuing relevance of Faulkner’s work.
“Professor Ladd is going to be talking about one of Faulkner’s greatest novels of race, ‘Absalom, Absalom!,’ but a novel that was written 85 years ago,” said Watson. “And yet, one of the things she’s going to address in her talk is that the moment that we are in, in this country right now. The dialogue on race and justice is a moment that Faulkner can help us out with.”
“Absalom, Absalom!” is one of the core novels in William Faulkner’s bibliography. Published in 1936, the novel weighs in on some of Faulkner’s favorite topics like race, family, history and memory. Charles Bon — the mixed race son of the novel’s central figure Thomas Sutpen — was the subject of Ladd’s lecture.
“21st century readers, we occupy a different kind of racial landscape than that really binary Jim Crow landscape of the ‘30s, when Faulkner wrote the novel,” Watson said. “So, the way 21st century people think about race — the more kind of fluid ways or multiracial ways that we think about racial identity — we can bring that back to Faulkner, and help make Faulkner more contemporary with us.”
Ladd has studied Faulkner and southern literature extensively, and is internationally recognized as an expert in the field. While the lecture focused primarily on Bon, Ladd opened her lecture with a striking consideration of Sutpen — the novel’s main figure — and the role he plays in the story of the South.
“What Sutpen might represent will change of course — does he represent the dark, grandiose pretensions of the southern planter? Or the rapacity of the American innocent? But it will, in most cases, be Thomas Sutpen and his story as the vehicle of the story of the South,” she said.
Ladd continued to deliver a striking presentation that was followed by an engaging discussion of the text and its content, driven by questions asked by the audience.
Everyone knows there is no better place to read, study and enjoy the works of William Faulkner than in Oxford, Mississippi. His characters are set against our most famous landmarks. Faulkner rests in the shade of our trees. The Howry Lecture in Faulkner Studies is sure to be a rich annual treasure for those who love literature, Faulkner and the South.
The next Howry Lecture in Faulkner Studies is set to take place in March 2022. Professor Sharon Holland of the University of North Carolina will be the Howry Lecturer.
