Keywords

For textual moments in which an enslaved person or group acts upon the desire to be free, as when Loosh or unnamed groups of slaves take advantage of the proximity of the Union Army to leave the Sartoris, Sutpen and other plantations where they were enslaved. Most examples of self-emancipation occur during the Civil War, but it also applies the way Thucydus earns the money to buy himself from the McCaslins. SR

For instances of the patterns that became a recurring aspect of the social interactions between slaves and masters, as in the description of the young slaves approaching Sutpen's big house on Christmas morning in expectation of a gift. SR

When black characters, especially ones who had been enslaved, seem nostalgic for the institution of slavery. Simon in Flags in the Dust is probably the most obvious instance of this. SR

To mark passages where white slave owners make some attempt to improve the condition of the slaves they own; the clearest example is way Buck and Buddy McCaslin treat their slaves. SR

We created this term to denote any instance in which the community operates as a social body, collectively self-organizing to think or do something. Sometimes, this may be simply believing an idea collectively and, at others, it may entail acting together as in the crowd at the horse auction of The Hamlet. JC and JJ

There are significant differences between "share-cropping" and "tenant farming" in reality. "Tenants" typically furnished their own farming tools and livestock, and had at least a measure of control over what crops they planted on land they rented from a landlord; "share-croppers" typically only contributed their own labor, with the landlord dictating what they would raise and providing the animals and tools they used. But in his fiction Faulkner does not maintain this distinction, using the terms as essentially synonymous. SR