- Yoknapatawpha County
Yoknapatawpha County is a fictional county created by American author
William Faulkner as a setting for many of his novels. It is widely believed by scholars thatLafayette County, Mississippi is the basis for Yoknapatawpha County. Faulkner would often refer to it as "my apocryphal county."Yoknapatawpha county is located in northwestern
Mississippi and its seat is the town of Jefferson. This fictional county is bounded on the north by theTallahatchie River and on the south by the Yoknapatawpha River and has an area of 2,400 mi² (6,200 km²). Most of the eastern half (as well as a small part of the southwest corner) of the county is pine hill country.The word "Yoknapatawpha" is pronounced "Yok'na pa TAW pha." It is derived from two Chickasaw words—"Yocona" and "petopha", meaning "split land." Faulkner claimed that the compound means "water flowing slow through the flatland," though this is unverified. "Yoknapatawpha" was the original name for the actual
Yocona River , which runs through the southern part of Lafayette County, of which Oxford is the seat.The area was originally
Chickasaw land. White settlement started around the year1800 . Prior to the Civil War, the county consisted of several largeplantation s:Louis Grenier 's in the southeast, McCaslin's in the northeast, Sutpen's in the northwest, andCompson 's and Sartoris's in the immediate vicinity of Jefferson. Later the county became mostly small farms. By1936 , the population was 15,611, of which 6,298 were whites and 9,313 were black.tories set in Yoknapatawpha County
* "
Sartoris " (1929)
* "The Sound and the Fury " (1929)
* "As I Lay Dying" (1930)
* "A Rose for Emily " (1930)
* "Spotted Horses " pub. in Scribner's Magazine (1930)
* "Dry September " (1931)
* "That Evening Sun " (1931)
* "Sanctuary" (1931)
* "Light in August " (1932)
* "Absalom, Absalom! " (1936)
* "The Unvanquished " (1938)
* "Barn Burning " (1939)
* "The Hamlet " (1940)
* "Go Down, Moses " (1942)
* "Intruder in the Dust " (1948)
* "Requiem for a Nun " (1951)
* "The Town" (1957)
* "The Mansion" (1959)
* "The Reivers " (1962)
* "Flags in the Dust " (1973)
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