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Faulkner: The Return of the Repressed. By Doreen Fowler. Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia. 1997. xxii, 215 pp. $35.00.
In Faulkner: The Return of the Repressed, Doreen Fowler applies Lacanian theory to the major works of William Faulkner with admirable though expected results, for there is not a more apt author she could choose in order to examine the psychoanalytical themes of incest, death, and repression. Faulkner scholars know intuitively that sexual as much as racial relations impel his fiction; yet Fowler provides insights because she uses text to explicate theory, not theory to explicate text. Faulkner is the focus of her study, and she states unequivocally, "I use Lacan only as a tool to help me uncover disguised or residual meanings in Faulkner's texts" (xix).
Through repetitive exploration of some basic Lacanian theories on such topics as...