Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1991. British and American Philologycal Studies (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 20)

László Dányi: Universal implications of William Styton's Southern Heritage

15 LÁSZLÓ DÁNYI UNIVERSAL IMPLICATIONS OF WILLIAM STYRON'S SOUTHERN HERITAGE This paper attempts to analyse how William Styron can find a new approach to literary motifs and how the Southern literary mode could be made to stay alive in conjunction with various trends in literature. In other words: what did Styron inherit and what did he learn from his literary predecessors? How could he incorporate this inheritance into his works? How can the familiar motifs convey entirely different implications? In the first part of tills essay, in order to answer these questions, I want to outline the various motifs that influenced Styron and the universal dimensions of his art. In the second part I want to examine how these motifs are incorporated in William Styron's Lie Down in Darkness (further on referred to as LDD) and Sophie's Choice (further on referred to as SC), by comparing Peyton Loftis in LDD and Stingo in SC. My aim is to prove the otherness of these two protagonists and to seek the social and psychological implications of the inherent difference. Taking into consideration the two parts of my essay as a whole I want to analyse the shift from the particular to the universal in Styron's art. I. William Styron could not escape being compared with Iiis literary predecessor, William Faulkner. All of these comparisons have raised the issue of the relationship between tradition and innovation or imitation and originality. For example, Styron's works have been criticized for the following "weaknesses": "the supposedly chaotic combination of Stingo's sex life with Sophie and Nathan's destructive love, the unjustified comparison of anti-seinitic Poland to a racist American South, the confused linking of Stingo's experience as a writer to Nathan's drug-induced madness, and, most importantly, the juxtaposition of all the above themes to the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps." ^ These critics tend to see the novels as either too general or too specific and they cannot see the shift from the particular to the universal.