Date of Award
Spring 2025
Language
English
Embargo Period
5-1-2025
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
College/School/Department
Department of English
Program
English
First Advisor
Paul Stasi
Second Advisor
Mike Hill
Committee Members
Dr. Ineke Murakami
Keywords
Faulkner, Eastern Myths
Subject Categories
Comparative Literature | Literature in English, North America
Abstract
This thesis explores William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying through the lens of comparative mythology, arguing that the novel constructs a counter-myth that challenges dominant Western narratives. By engaging with non-Western mythological traditions—particularly Proto-Indo European, Hindu, and Indigenous cosmologies—the study reveals how Faulkner embeds symbolic structures that transcend Christian and Greco-Roman frameworks. Using semiology and structuralist frameworks developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes, the analysis deciphers a mythopoetic narrative that refocuses marginalized myths to destabilize binary oppositions such as Christian/Pagan, civilized/uncivilized, and male creation myths with female creation myths. Each chapter examines a different mythic layer: Chapter One interprets the Bundren family’s journey through world-wide Ursa Major myths and the axis mundi motif; Chapter Two identifies linguistic and thematic links to Hindu deities and cosmology; and Chapter Three recasts Anse Bundren as a trickster god, a figure known for mischievous and theft that ultimately disrupts binary oppositions. This thesis demonstrates that Faulkner’s novel serves not merely as a Southern gothic narrative but as a transgressive mythic text that reclaims suppressed cosmologies and reimagines freedom beyond dogmatic constraints. This thesis argues that Faulkner’s novel reanimates mythic patterns, ones that have been marginalized or labeled as Pagan or Heathen, as counter-myths that ultimately rupture the foundations of Western myth and hegemonic social narratives.
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Groupp, Allison K., "Mythogenesis in As I Lay Dying: A Comparative Exploration of Mythmaking and Counter-Myths" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present). 232.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/etd/232
