This essay argues for a wider recognition of The Unvanquished as a short-story cycle and for a new appreciation of its generic features of simultaneous fragmentation and unity. For much of its critical history The Unvanquished was misinterpreted as a short story miscellany or as a bildungsroman. Reading it as a short-story cycle allows an acknowledgment of its inherent tensions and discontinuities without urging a resolution that would elide or eclipse them, as has frequently been critical practice. Presenting first an overview of the conflicted critical history of The Unvanquished, and demonstrating Faulkner's deliberate use of hybrid forms, the essay then focuses on the distinguishing features of three stories to explore the tensions between their disparate plot movements and the volume's underlying unity. The essay's central argument is that it is due to its hybrid formality that The Unvanquished presents a unique contribution to Faulkner's oeuvre of the 1930s.
ARTICLE HISTORYOften regarded as one of William Faulkner's least notable works, The Unvanquished (1938) has received relatively little attention in the huge repository of Faulkner studies. Critical and academic opinions have favoured Faulkners' more complex 1930s fiction, and the quantity and quality of this book's reception does not compare with the reception of As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932) or Absalom, Absalom! (1936). Much of the early critical interest in The Unvanquished focused on the book's genre. While early reviewers were favourably impressed by what they deemed was a collection of interlinked stories, most literary critics since the mid-twentieth century have regarded the book as a novel. The question of the book's genre may appear to be merely one of description or categorisation, but it is however an important one. Genre guides critical and readerly expectations and is instrumental in determining our appreciation and evaluation of literary works. For instance, the view that The Unvanquished is to be considered a collection of stories with little internal coherence would undercut the notion that its overall thematic complexity is worthy of serious critical attention. Similarly, reading the book as a novel would eclipse the brilliant diversity of the book's disparate plotlines. Both readings would fail to adequately evaluate The Unvanquished's place in the development of
