Yoknapatawpha County

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Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional County ( County ) in the American state of Mississippi , the scene of most of the novels and stories of the Nobel laureate William Faulkner 's. The model for Yoknapatawpha County was Lafayette County in the same US state.

location

In 1946, Faulkner made a map of the county for the anthology The Portable Faulkner, edited by Malcolm Cowley , which is now often included in the aforementioned novels.

Yoknapatawpha County is located in the northwest of the American state Mississippi. It covers 2400 square miles (6215 km²) and is bounded in the north by the (real) Tallahatchie River and in the south by the (fictional) Yoknapatawpha River. The eastern half and the southwestern tip of the county are hill country covered by pine forests, the rest is used for agriculture.

history

The area was originally the settlement area of ​​the Chickasaw Indians. According to Faulkner, the name Yoknapatawpha is derived from the Chickasaw words Yocona and petopha . Yocona is a real river, petopha means “divided land” and the compound Yoknapatawpha according to Faulkner “water that flows slowly through the plain”.

From around 1800 the area was populated by whites. Until the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, a large part of the county was divided into large plantations. The Louis Greniers plantation was in the southeast, that of the Sutpen family in the northwest, and that of the Compton and Sartoris families in the immediate vicinity of the county seat of Jefferson City in central Yoknapatawpha County; after the war they lost a large part of their land and many small farms were established. In 1936, Yoknapatawpha County had 15,611 residents, of whom 6,298 were white and 9,313 were black.

Novels

The following novels are set entirely or predominantly in Yoknapatawpha County:

literature

  • Don Harrison Doyle: Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha . UNC Press, 2001, ISBN 0807849316 .
  • Doreen Fowler, Ann J. Abadie: Fifty Years of Yoknapatawpha: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha . University Press of Mississippi, 1980, ISBN 0878051228 .
  • William Faulkner: Faulkner's County: Tales of Yoknapatawpha County . Chatto & Windus, 1955
  • John Pilkington: The Heart of Yoknapatawpha . University Press of Mississippi, 1981, ISBN 087805135X .
  • John Kenny Crane: The Yoknapatawpha Chronicle of Gavin Stevens . Susquehanna University Press, 1988, ISBN 0941664902 .