Keywords

Vocabulary: Themes and Motifs
Term ID Term Parentsort ascending Description
845 Sexual power Recurring Tropes
867 Gossip Recurring Tropes
873 Upward mobility Recurring Tropes
875 Fire on the hearth Recurring Tropes
1024 Twilight Recurring Tropes
1032 Gaze Recurring Tropes
1177 Endurance Recurring Tropes
1202 "Wait" Recurring Tropes

Spoken by a character to pause or slow down narration by another character so s/he can process the significance or take over the narration. The classic examples are from ABSALOM, but it's a signature verbal formula across Faulkner. JW

1256 Going fast Recurring Tropes
1259 Tomorrow and tomorrow Recurring Tropes
1332 Nothingness Recurring Tropes
1352 Life as repetition Recurring Tropes
1541 Scandal Recurring Tropes
1923 Paradox Recurring Tropes
1927 Fatality Recurring Tropes
1933 Sun / Sunlight Recurring Tropes
1948 Threshold Recurring Tropes
1950 Triumph Recurring Tropes
1982 Belatedness Recurring Tropes
1985 Open secret Recurring Tropes

Any moment when everyone or many people in a place know something to be true, but they pretend not to know it. For example, everyone knows Linda is not Flem's child, but pretends to not know, just as everyone pretends John Powell brings his gun to work but people pretend he does not. JB

2023 Dream Recurring Tropes
2030 Solitude Recurring Tropes
2181 Precognition / Something to happen Recurring Tropes

For when a character precognitively senses or says that "something" is going to happen to him/her - e.g., Joe Christmas, Miss Zilphia Gant. JBP

2183 Destiny Recurring Tropes
2204 Confederate monument Recurring Tropes
2310 Performance Recurring Tropes
2314 Illusion Recurring Tropes
2337 Doom Recurring Tropes
2343 Dead time Recurring Tropes
2366 Imitation Recurring Tropes
2383 Secret Recurring Tropes
2398 Eternal feminine Recurring Tropes
2453 Searching Recurring Tropes
2474 Hands in pockets Recurring Tropes
2511 Chasing a person Recurring Tropes

For the many instances when a human being is hunted by others - the slave in "Red Leaves," the architect in Absalom!, Christmas several times in Light in August, Miss Quentin in The Sound and the Fury, etc. SR

2592 Solitary Recurring Tropes
2607 Sound of a gunshot Recurring Tropes
2609 Touch Recurring Tropes
2622 Mediation Recurring Tropes

Used to describe the state of being mediated, especially a relationship where the perceiver looks upon or through a medium. JC

2623 Fairy-tale Recurring Tropes
2625 Echo Recurring Tropes
2626 Reality Recurring Tropes
2631 Restoration / rebuilding Recurring Tropes
2651 Fixation Recurring Tropes

The action or process of fixing or being fixed. For instance, In AA!, characters find themselves fixed in place, unable to move beyond something either spatially or conceptually. JC

2653 Odor Recurring Tropes
2659 Mausoleum Recurring Tropes
2671 Dream turns to dust Recurring Tropes
2876 Sleeping in same bed Recurring Tropes

For when two characters (usually black and white) sleep in the same bed; Benjy with Luster in S&F, Lucas and Henry in GDM, etc. -JBP

2946 Recovery Recurring Tropes
2978 Smelled like trees Recurring Tropes
3043 Sending someone to Jackson Recurring Tropes
3064 Shadows Recurring Tropes
3271 Little sister Recurring Tropes
3279 Father said Recurring Tropes
3417 Vitality Recurring Tropes
3418 Stillness Recurring Tropes
3539 Thinking of home Recurring Tropes
3746 Sole owner and proprietor Recurring Tropes
3850 Beyond Recurring Tropes

I added this keyword to mark places where a character or text contemplates or imagines exceeding ordinary or usual boundaries. Specifically, this was added for when Quentin starts imagining "a hell beyond that" for him and Caddy. It can be used when "beyond" or a similar construction is used in figurative ways. JBP

4209 Apparition Recurring Tropes
4210 Vanishing Recurring Tropes
4216 Apotheosis Recurring Tropes
4236 Dark house Recurring Tropes
4349 Design Recurring Tropes
4367 Revenge Recurring Tropes
4398 Reunion Recurring Tropes
4399 Glory Recurring Tropes
4483 Laughter as sign of madness Recurring Tropes
4905 Killing first deer/marked with blood Recurring Tropes
4910 Year the stars fell Recurring Tropes

Added to refer to Faulkner's reference in at least two texts to 1833, "the year the stars fell" (in Appendix and in Go Down, Moses). Seems to refer to an actual historical event of a massive meteor shower that year which many interpreted as an omen, possibly even of end of times. Here is one article referencing the event: https://www.ancestry.com/contextux/historicalinsights/night-stars-fell-m.... JBP

5329 Right-of-way Recurring Tropes

Use to identify scenes where - because of race or class - one person is denied the right-of-way in a public space. The Sutpen children being 'ridden down' by a carriage, or Mink Snopes by Houston, and so on. Includes the related episodoes of Bayard Sartoris almost driving into wagons with Negroes in them. SR

5338 Constitutive moment Recurring Tropes

A moment in a character's story when something happens that changes the arc of his or her life. For example, when in Absalom! Thomas Sutpen is turned away from the front door of that Tidewater plantation. Or in The Mansion, when Houston tells Mink Snopes he still owes the one dollar "pound fee" (28). SR

Vocabulary: Aesthetics
Term ID Term Parentsort ascending Description
2244 Recurring event, intratextual Recurring Episodes

When Faulkner refers to or re-writes an event more than once inside a single text, for example the four references to Caddy's muddy drawers in Benjy and Quentin's sections of The Sound and the Fury. SR

2245 Recurring event, intertextual Recurring Episodes

When Faulkner in one text refers to or re-writes an event that also occurs in other text(s), for example the account of Miss Quentin climbing down the pear tree (in The Sound and the Fury) or the rain pipe (as the same event has it in the "Appendix" and The Mansion. SR

5024 Old Bayard's death Recurring Episodes
5025 Negro voting Recurring Episodes
5026 Sartoris captures Yankees Recurring Episodes
5027 Jenny arrives Recurring Episodes
5028 Colonel Sartoris killed Recurring Episodes
5029 Bayard avenges Johnny Recurring Episodes
5030 Johnny Sartoris shot down Recurring Episodes
5031 Byron robs bank Recurring Episodes
5032 Young Bayard's death Recurring Episodes
5033 Narcissa's anonymous letters Recurring Episodes
5034 Benjy accosts schoolgirl Recurring Episodes
5035 Miss Quentin runs away Recurring Episodes
5036 Benjy's name changed Recurring Episodes
5037 Texas horses auctioned Recurring Episodes
5038 Burying Sartoris silver Recurring Episodes
5039 Doom becomes chief Recurring Episodes
5040 Sartoris builds railroad Recurring Episodes
5041 Old Frenchman's arrival Recurring Episodes
5042 First settlers arrive Recurring Episodes
5043 Indian removal Recurring Episodes
5044 Sartoris raises regiment Recurring Episodes
5045 Sartoris deposed Recurring Episodes
5046 Battle of Jefferson Recurring Episodes
5047 Etching name on window Recurring Episodes
5048 Buck and Buddy's experiment Recurring Episodes
5049 Ringo whips Ab Recurring Episodes

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