Hamlet (place)

About: Hamlet (place) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2771 publications have been published within this topic receiving 16301 citations.

Allegory as rhetoric: Faulkner's trilogy

Abstract: Careful and critical readers are aware that frequently, it is in the reflections of others that they see themselves. This is but one of the effects which readers both experience and respond to as they read Faulkner's trilogy. Functioning as their narrator--their surrogate--and their touchstone, V. K. Ratliff reveals to them the effects of Faulkner's militant rhetoric, rhetoric which is devised to deliberately manipulate their thoughts and those of Ratliff and other characters in his trilogy and effect mental changes in all of them. Exploiting such rhetorical and stylistic devices as designed instability, misdirection, implicature, and ellipses, Faulkner's manipulative style forces his readers to both experience the effects of Ratliff's contradictory behavior and respond to Faulkner's texts by speaking with them. What is unique about Faulkner's rhetorical use of allegory is that the allegory he chooses--one which is both familiar but whose message only seems obvious--causes uncritical readers to overlook it as either a rhetorical argument or an analytical tool. Because most readers are aware of some version of the tale about the man who sells his soul to the devil, they miss the implicature which