…Elizabeth M. Kerr has, with the publication of William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha: ‘A Kind of Keystone in the Universe,’ completed a comprehensive examination of Faulkner’s mythical county…this latest work deals with the ‘symbolic values related to the themes of the separate narratives and to the encompassing mythology.’ In successive chapters, Kerr examines (1) recurrent symbols and archetypes in Faulkner’s fiction; (2) mythology in the modern world, the South, and Yoknapatawpha; and (3) ‘the basic Christian humanism which underlies Williams Faulkner’s existential focus on the human condition’ - most specifically as it relates to Time, Motion, and Change. The book is scholarly, well written, and carefully organized…Highly recommended. -Choice

Aiming for the universal in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fiction, this book reads somewhat like an annotated bibliography, or three bibliographies: one on symbols in Yoknapatawpha, citing (copiously) dissertations, articles, and books on symbolism in general and Faulkner’s own symbols; one on various myths Kerr and other critics have noticed in Yoknapatawpha