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
16 In a closer analysis of the motifs and the dimensions dominating in LDD and SC the convent ional requisites convey new and different meanings. The main thrust of Styron criticism has been to weigh lightly the regional Southern influence. Recent criticism identifies broader contemporary ideas from existentialism to the French "nouveau roman" and it concentrates on the universal dimensions of Styron's themes. In Styron's novels the reader can find a lot of references to myths and motifs due to "... factors like the mosaic-like social structure of U.S. society and a host of contradictions between the American creed and social reality, or between the gradual degradation of the presumably high idealism of the first generations of new world settlers and the subsequent course of American historical development, by now there is practically no American myth that has gone unchallenged within the nation itself. The following myths and motifs extend the dimensions and create the encyclopedic characteristic features of Styron's novels. 1/The Southern Myth An important Southern quality and perspective exists in Styron's novels. Styron struggles with the ambiguous inheritance of an American who belongs "neither to the Deep South sunk in its archaic doom nor to the Yankee blend of purposefulness and inferiority complex."^ The recurring elements of the Southern Myth can be found in Styron's works. It is hard to define what the Southern Myth is because in a broad sense it contains various interdependent myths related to hot-blooded Cavaliers, who founded the South, to romantic characteristics of the Southern temperament like a cliivalric attitude toward women and a code of personal honour. The pro-slavery South meant oligarchy and Cavaliers imitated the manners of the European nobility. These characteristics of the Southern myth have changed and in Faulkner ' s fiction "doom" and "defeat" became the key words when speaking about the South. "Doom" derives from numerous legends of drowned and buried cities. In the Bible the wicked city of Babylon its walls were doomed to destruction by the Lord'* and, for example, in American iiterature Edgar Allan Poe incorporated this motif into his poem called "The City in the Sea", earlier entitled "The Doomed City". In the South the Cavaliers sunk to the level of the meanness of the whites, and aristocratic families, haunted by the memories of past glory, degenerated. The general decline of the South and the sin of pride dooms the ambitious families. "Doom" becomes a part of the subconscious of Styron's heroes. For example, Stingo, "... in bed with a woman not his
