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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.