“The Wishing Tree”: William Faulkner's Only Experiment in Children's Fiction
- Issue:
- УДК / UDK: 82(091)
- DOI:
- Abstract:
This paper is concerned with “The Wishing Tree”, the only children’s story known to have been created by William Faulkner. It was written in 1927 for Faulkner’s future stepdaughter Victoria Franklin and published in 1967. Though it has been seen as a marginal part of Faulkner’s work, “The Wishing Tree” provides an aid in interpreting his major themes. It should be studied together with Faulkner’s modernist novels and stories of the late 1920s, especially taking into consideration Faulkner’s deep interest in children’s consciousness. Faulkner pays respect to the conventions of children’s literature, so the story includes didactic elements. At the same time, in “The Wishing Tree” Faulkner experiments with estrangement techniques and introduces several motives particularly important in “The Sound and the Fury”, e.g. desire and the relativity of time and memory. Moreover, in “The Wishing Tree” Faulkner juxtaposes the intuitive thinking of a child and of an adult “primitive”. Faulkner’s children’s story is a quest, taking place in the allegorical space in which wishes are instantly verbalized and words become flesh. The dreamlike nature of the plot provides parallels with “Alice in Wonderland”, yet the whole range of allusions is rather peculiar: Maeterlinck's symbolist dramas, James Branch Cabell’s fantasy novels, etc. The paper also investigates the parallels between “The Wishing Tree” and “Mayday” (1926), another example of young Faulkner’s “fantasy fiction”, a “fable” about a young knight’s quest for love.
- Keywords: William Faulkner, children’s literature, children’s consciousness, modernism, fantasy, allegory, didacticism.
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