It is more difficult with Faulkner than with most authors to say what is the extent and what is the source of his knowledge. His own testimony is that he has read very little in the history of the South, implying that what he knows of that history has come to him orally and that he knows the world around him primarily from his own unassisted observation. His denials of extensive reading notwithstanding, it is no doubt safe to assume that he has spent time schooling himself in Southern history and that he has gained some acquaintance with the chief literary authors who have lived in the South or have written about the South. To believe otherwise would be unrealistic.

But in looking at Faulkner against his background in Mississippi and the South, it is important not to lose the broader perspective. His earliest work reflected heavy influences from English and continental writers. Evidence is plentiful that early and later also he has been indebted to the Gothic romancers, who deal in extravagant horror, to the symbolists writing at the end of the preceding century, and in particular to the stream-of-consciousness novelists, Henry James and James Joyce among them. His repeated experimentation with the techniques of fiction testifies to an independence of mind and an originality of approach, but it also shows him touching at many points the stream of literary development back of him. My intention, therefore, is not to say that Faulkner's awareness has been confined within the borders of the South, but rather that he has looked at his world as a Southerner and that presumably his outlook is Southern.