威廉•福克納（William Faulkner）在1932年出版的《八月之光》（Light in August），常因其三條分離但並行的故事線，及其三條線各自所著重之人物的不同，而招致某些評論者質疑其敘事中缺乏一貫性的主題。然而，如果先借用結構主義的方法來閱讀此小說，會發現白人文化中某些常規化或理想化的形象重複地在不同故事線裡、不同人物的行為模式裡出現。小說中出現的形象包括英雄般的白人男性、理想的白人母親、及強暴犯似的黑人男性。這些常規化的形象與理察•金（Richard H. King）在研究美國南方歷史後所提出的白人家庭結構及家族傳奇相呼應，進而提供一個可用來研究近代南方身份認同的基本架構及主題焦點。金所建立的一種比喻性的典型家庭結構不但檢視了個體（不論其為男／女性或黑／白人）如何在其文化所定義之典型的陰影下建立其身份認同，此結構更顯露出一種近代南方對於一個完美但卻已不復返之過去的憂鬱情懷。
美國南方家族傳奇並非沒有其缺陷，而《八月之光》也絕非一本單純地展現了一個以男性及白人為中心的南方理想多麼具有壓迫性、支配性的小說。《八月之光》不只反思其書中人物那強迫似地、著迷似地遵從南方文化理想而造成的後果，此小說更闡明了一個逐漸被「去迷思化」（de-mythicize）的家族傳奇如何延續其影響、進而形塑近代南方人對自我的認知。由此，《八月之光》體現了福克納自身一種模稜兩可的態度，成為了一本雖批評南方白人傳統、但卻不完全否認此傳統仍持續發揮其作用的小說。福克納描繪小說中人物的行為舉止是如何地重複並遵循某些傳統形象而運作，只為了成為理想中的南方人。作者更描寫這些人物如何地扭曲其身處的現實環境、亦或犧牲其性別上或種族上弱勢的他者，只為了建立出意識型態上的依據來合理化其遵循傳統形象而運作之行為模式。於是，當小說人物的身份無法迎合南方文化的常規、亦或是當其身處之性別／種族階級及家庭完整性受到挑戰，這些人物會有目的性地忽視或謬誤地重新定義他們所處的立場，以便於他們依據常規化的形象來展演其行為，進而重新確立其身份與社會階級之「完整」（intactness）。然而，此種「完整」在本質上終究為虛構的、幻想出來的，因為這些人物原本早已偏離或不符合其社會理想。因此，此種依據可疑的、不實際的立場所展現之常規化的行為模式使得小說人物的身份建構轉化為儀式性的、程式性的表演行為，而這些人物實行此種表演為的是掩蓋他們身處近代南方所「匱乏」（lack）的南方身份認同。最後，小說人物這些複製過去之行為不但促成了常規形象之神話化或崇拜化，此種行為更將這些人物抽離他們所處的現實、進而沉迷於一種理想化的生活方式。
經由簡略地將某些理論－－包括巴特勒（Judith Butler)的展演（performance）及拉崗（Jacques Lacan）對於符徵（signifier）的討論－－融入金所做的南方歷史研究，本篇論文試圖將《八月之光》中所呈現的南方文化常規與當代理論相互結合，且同時落實研究福克納作品時必須將其歷史「脈絡化」（historicization）之理念。論文中的三個章節首先會分別探討南方理想白人女性特質、白人男性特質、及黑人男性特質之思想體系形成及其歷史因素，接著再詳細地解讀《八月之光》中每位人物如何回應、涉入、或利用上述這些對他們生活已無實際價值但卻仍有其一定作用力的強暴迷思及南方「特質」。

William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), with its three separate plotlines, each of which focuses on different sets of characters, often leads to some critics’ questioning its thematic unity. However, if we first apply a structuralist approach to the novel, it turns out that characters from different plotlines often repetitively exhibit the same patterns of behavior that conform to the Southern white stereotypical images. The images mostly concerned include those of the heroic white men, the ideal white mothers, and the black male rapists. These stereotypical images, upon which Richard H. King also stresses in his historical study of the conventional Southern structure of white “family romance,” provide us with a structural basis and a thematic focus to study the modern Southern identities. King’s paradigms of metaphorical-familial structure not only examine how each identity (whether it is male/female or black/white) in its construction is invariably under the shadow of cultural stereotypes, but they also reveal to us a modern Southern melancholia for an ideal but long-lost past.
The Southern “family romance” is not without its flaws, and Light in August is more than a novel simply showing how oppressive and dominant a white- and male-centered Southern hegemony is. The novel not only reflects upon the consequences caused by its characters’ compulsive and obsessive conformity to the Southern ideal, but it also exhibits how the gradually de-mythicized romance still exerts its power to shape the modern Southerners’ self-understanding. Light in August thus embodies Faulkner’s modernist ambiguity in his creation of a novel that criticizes the Southern white conventions without completely disavowing their ideological function. Faulkner portrays not only how the characters repetitively behave in certain forms in conformity to the conventional images as ideal Southerners but also how they distort the circumstances in which they live or victimize their sexual/racial inferiors to create ideological basis for them to justifiably behave in certain forms. Accordingly, when the characters’ identities fail to conform to the cultural norms, and when the Southern sexual/racial hierarchy and familial intactness is thus challenged, they purposefully ignore or falsely re-define their stance so as to perform as stereotypical figures and to re-affirm the “intactness” of their identities and social hierarchy－an “intactness” that is nonetheless imaginary in essence because of their original deviation from or inconformity to those norms. The questionable stance on which the characters enact conventional stereotypes (coded by the “family romance”) makes their identity construction become ritualized/stylized performative acts, and they do such performance so as to cover up their lack of Southern identities in the modern South. Eventually, the characters’ repetition of the past not only cements the mythicizing or fetishizing of stereotypical figures, but it also pulls them away from reality and makes them indulge in an ideal way of life.
By briefly synthesizing different theories－Judith Butler’s notion of performance and Jacques Lacan’s account of the signifier－with King’s study, this thesis attempts to frame the specific Southern context (shown in the novel’s representations of cultural stereotypes) in the language of contemporary theories as well as keep alert to the significance of “historicization” in reading Faulkner’s works. The three chapters will first talk about the ideological and historical formations of ideal Southern white womanhood, white manhood, and black manhood respectively, and then use Light in August to closely interpret each character’s reaction to, involvement with, or exploitation of those “Southern-hoods” (and the Southern rape myth) that are no longer relevant to but still visibly functioning in their lives.

Abdur-Rahman, Aliyyah I. “White Disavowal, Black Enfranchisement, and the Homoerotic in William Faulkner’s Light in August.” The Faulkner Journal 22.1-2 (2006-07): 176-92. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Adamowski, T. H. “Joe Christmas: The Tyranny of Childhood.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 4.3 (1971): 240-51. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2009.
Andrews, Karen M. “The Shaping of Joanna Burden in Light in August.” Pacific Coast Philology 26 (1991): 3-12. JSTOR. Web. 25 Sept. 2009.
Austin, J. L. “Performative Utterances.” Philosophical Papers. 3rd ed. Eds. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979. 233-54. Rpt. in Leitch 1289-301.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1952. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.
Bell, Walter F. “War.” Carroll 481-83.
Bevis, Charlie. “Faulkner Reveals the Real Father of Lena’s Baby in Light in August.” The Explicator 66.4 (2008): 219-21. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Bleikasten, André. “Fathers in Faulkner and Light in August.” Bloom 43-55.
---.“Light in August: The Closed Society and Its Subjects.” Millgate 81-102.
Bloom, Harold, ed. William Faulkner’s Light in August. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. Print.
Brinkmeyer, Robert H., Jr. “The Southern Literary Renaissance.” Gray and Robinson 148-65.
Brooks, Cleanth. “The Community and the Pariah.” William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. New Haven: Yale UP, 1963. 47-74. Rpt. in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Light in August: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. David L. Minter. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969. 55-70. Print.
---.“Faulkner’s ‘Motherless’ Children.” On the Prejudices, Predilections, and Firm Beliefs of William Faulkner. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987. 66-79. Print.
---. William Faulkner: First Encounters. New Haven: Yale UP, 1983. Print.
Butler, Judith. “Subversive Bodily Acts.” Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. 79-141. Print.
Caron, Timothy P. “‘He Doth Bestride the Narrow World Like a Colossus’: Faulkner’s Critical Reception.” Moreland, Companion 479-98.
Carroll, Bret E., ed. American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003. Print.
Carroll, Bret E., and Calinda N. Lee. “Chivalry.” Carroll 87-89.
Cash, W. J. “Of the Frontier the Yankee Made.” The Mind of the South. 1941. New York: Vintage, 1991. 103-44. Print.
Clarke, Deborah. “Bodies and Language: Light in August and The Wild Palms.” Robbing the Mother: Women in Faulkner. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1994. 92-124. Print.
Dondlinger, Mary Joanne. “Getting Around the Body: The Matter of Race and Gender in Faulkner’s Light in August.” Faulkner and the Natural World: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1996. Eds. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999. 98-125. Print.
Duck, Leigh Anne. “Religion: Desire and Ideology.” Moreland, Companion 269-83.
Eagle, Jonna. “White Supremacism.” Carroll 494-97.
Eagleton, Terry. “Psychoanalysis.” Literary Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. 151-93. Print.
Faulkner, William. Light in August. 1932. New York: Vintage International, 1990. Print.
---.“A Rose for Emily.” 1930. Classic Short Fiction. Ed. Charles H. Bohner. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1986. 354-60. Print.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.
Forter, Greg. “Faulkner, Trauma, and the Uses of Crime Fiction.” Moreland, Companion 373-93.
---.“Freud, Faulkner, Caruth: Trauma and the Politics of Literary Form.” Narrative 15.3 (2007): 259-85. Project Muse. Web. 18 Nov. 2009.
Fowler, Doreen, and Ann J. Abadie, eds. Faulkner and Race: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 1986. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1987. Print.
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 1920. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 18. Trans. James Strachey. Eds. James Strachey, et al. London: Vintage, 1975. 7-64. Print.
---.“Family Romances.” 1909. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 9. Trans. James Strachey. Eds. James Strachey, et al. London: Vintage, 1975. 237-41. Print.
---.“The ‘Uncanny.’” 1919. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 17. Trans. James Strachey. Eds. James Strachey, et al. London: Vintage, 1975. 217-52. Rpt. in Leitch 824-41.
Godden, Richard. “William Faulkner.” Gray and Robinson 436-53.
Grant, Susan-Mary. “Southern Writers and the Civil War.” Gray and Robinson 93-109.
Gray, Richard, and Owen Robinson, eds. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. Print.
Gwynn, Frederick L., and Joseph L. Blotner, eds. Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia, 1957-1958. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1959. Print.
Hale, Grace Elizabeth, and Robert Jackson. “‘We’re Trying Hard as Hell to Free Ourselves’: Sothern History and Race in the Making of William Faulkner’s Literary Terrain.” Moreland, Companion 27-45.
Hasratian, Avak. “The Death of Difference in Light in August.” Criticism 49.1 (2007): 55-84. Project Muse. Web. 19 Nov. 2009.
Hönnighausen, Lothar. “New Modes of Metaphor: The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and A Fable.” Faulkner: Masks and Metaphors. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1997. 137-56. Print.
Homer, Sean. Routledge Critical Thinkers: Jacques Lacan. London: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Hungerford, Harold. “Past and Present in Light in August.” American Literature 55.2 (1983): 183-98. JSTOR. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.
Jackson, Chuck. “American Emergencies: Whiteness, the National Guard, and Light in August.” The Faulkner Journal 22.1-2 (2006-07): 193-208. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Jerng, Mark C. “The Character of Race: Adoption and Individuation in William Faulkner’s Light in August and Charles Chesnutt’s The Quarry.” Arizona Quarterly 64.4 (2008): 69-102. Project Muse. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.
Jones, Anne Goodwyn. “A Loving Gentleman and the Corncob Man: Faulkner, Gender, Sexuality, and The Reivers.” Moreland, Companion 46-64.
Kazin, Alfred. “The Stillness of Light in August.” Twelve Original Essays on Great American Novels. Ed. Charles Shapiro. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1958. 257-83. Rpt. in Warren, Collection 147-62.
King, Richard H. A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Print.
Lacan, Jacques. “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason since Freud.” Écrits: A Selection. 1966. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge, 1977. 161-97. Print.
Lackey, Michael. “The Ideological Function of the God-Concept in Faulkner’s Light in August.” The Faulkner Journal 21.1-2 (2005-06): 66-90. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Lam, Bethany L. “Light in August in Light of Foucault: Reexamining the Biracial Experience.” Arizona Quarterly 64.4 (2008): 49-68. Project Muse. Web. 25 Nov. 2009.
Leitch, Vincent B., et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.
Leonard, David J. “African-American Manhood.” Carroll 15-20.
McAfee, Noëlle. Routledge Critical Thinkers: Julia Kristeva. London: Routledge, 2004. Print.
McKee, Patricia. “Playing White Men in Light in August.” Producing American Races: Henry James, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. 123-45. Print.
Martin, Robert A. “Faulkner’s American Dream and Hightower.” College Literature 12.3 (1985): 282-85. JSTOR. Web. 27 Oct. 2009.
Matthews, John T. “Come Up: From Red Necks to Riches.” William Faulkner: Seeing Through the South. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 124-71. Print.
Millgate, Michael, ed. New Essays on Light in August. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987. Print.
Minter, David L. “A Brief Encounter with the Stories and Tensions That Define Light in August.” Faulkner’s Questioning Narratives: Fictions of His Major Phase, 1929-42. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2001. 86-95. Print.
Moreland, Richard C., ed. A Companion to William Faulkner. Malden: Blackwell, 2007. Print.
---.“Faulkner and Modernism.” Weinstein, Cambridge 17-30.
Nelson, Lisa K. “Masculinity, Menace, and American Mythologies of Race in Faulkner’s Anti-Heroes.” The Faulkner Journal 19.2 (2004): 49-68. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “First Essay: ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad.’” On the Genealogy of Morals. 1887. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. 11-38. Print.
Ownby, Ted. “Southern Manhood.” Carroll 429-33.
Robinson, Owen. “Reflections on Language and Narrative.” Moreland, Companion 115-32.
Salin, Sara. Routledge Critical Thinkers: Judith Butler. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Schreiber, Evelyn Jaffe. “‘Memory Believes Before Knowing Remembers’: The Insistence of the Past and Lacan’s Unconscious Desire in Light in August.” The Faulkner Journal 20.1-2 (2004-05): 71-84. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Selden, Raman, et al., eds. “Postmodernist Theories.” A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 5th ed. Harlow: Pearson, 2005. 197-217. Print.
Singal, Daniel J. “The Making of a Modernist Identity: Light in August.” William Faulkner: The Making of a Modernist. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1997. 167-88. Print.
Snead, James A. “Light in August and the Rhetorics of Racial Division.” Figures of Division: William Faulkner’s Major Novels. New York: Methuen, 1986. N. pag. Rpt. in Fowler and Abadie 152-69.
Sommerville, Diane Miller. “The Rape Myth in the Old South Reconsidered.” The Journal of Southern History 61.3 (1995): 481-518. JSTOR. Web. 30 Mar. 2010.
Sundquist, Eric J. “Faulkner, Race, and Forms of American Fiction.” Fowler and Abadie 1-34.
---.“The Strange Career of Joe Christmas.” Faulkner: The House Divided. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1983. 63-95. Print.
Thurschwell, Pamela. Routledge Critical Thinkers: Sigmund Freud. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Tucker, John. “William Faulkner’s Light in August: Toward a Structuralist Reading.” Modern Language Quarterly 43.2 (1982): 138-55. Academic Search Premiere (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Nov. 2009.
Warren, Robert Penn, ed. Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966. Print.
---.“Faulkner: Past and Future.” Introduction. Warren, Collection 1-22.
Weinstein, Philip M. “Becoming Joe Christmas and Ike McCaslin.” Faulkner’s Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. 99-153. Print.
---, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Faulkner. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
---.“‘Make It New’: Faulkner and Modernism.” Moreland, Companion 342-58.
---.“Marginalia: Faulkner’s Black Lives.” Fowler and Abadie 170-91.
Welsh, Alexander. “On the Difference between Prevailing and Enduring.” Millgate 123-47.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. “Southern Religion(s).” Gray and Robinson 238-54.
Winter, Thomas. “Civil War.” Carroll 94-96.
---.“Nationalism.” Carroll 329-32.
---.“Patriarchy.” Carroll 354-58.
Wittenberg, Judith Bryant. “Race in Light in August: Wordsymbols and Obverse Reflections.” Weinstein, Cambridge 146-67.
---.“The Women of Light in August.” Millgate 103-22.
Yaeger, Patricia. “Beyond the Hummingbird: Southern Women Writers and the Southern Gargantua.” Haunted Bodies: Gender and Southern Texts. Eds. Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan V. Donaldson. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1997. 287-318. Print.