Totalitarian Faulkner: The Nazi Interpretation of Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!

This piece, "Totalitarian Faulkner," examines the early German translations (1936 and 1938) of Faulkner's Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!, about which almost nothing has been written in English. I show that the circulation of these works in a National Socialist context provides a counternarrative to the accepted interpretation of Faulkner as an unrecognized, apolitical international modernist. Contrary to this hypothesis, I suggest that there exist thematic elements in Faulkner's fiction that prove adaptable to a Fascist context. I reveal these significances by close reading Absalom alongside an interpretation of Nazi "blood and soil" ideologies.