“Held Together With Lies” Faulkner’s South and the Southern Gothic as a Genre for the Oppressed

Abstract

This project examines themes of shame, isolation, and identity within in tradition of the Southern Gothic, drawing on texts from across the decades and the most recent feminist and progressive scholarship on the genre to argue that the Southern Gothic, once a vestige of a troubling past, has become an ideal genre for the marginalized writer. The second part of this project is comprised of several creative pieces centered on Southern identity.