Noel Polk

Major Works

• The Literary Manuscripts of Harold Frederic: A Catalogue. New York: Garland Pub., 1979.
• Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun: A Critical Study. Bloomington: Indiana  University Press, 1981.
• An Editorial Handbook for William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. New York: Garland Pub., 1985.
• Turning Points  by John Ray Skates and Noel Polk. Jackson: Mississippi, Committee for the Humanities,1986.
• Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994.
• Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner. Jackson: University Press of  Mississippi, 1996.
• Reading Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury. Glossary and commentary by Stephen M. Ross and Noel Polk. Jackson:  University Press of Mississippi, 1996.
• Outside the Southern Myth.  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.

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Biography of Noel Polk

Noel Polk was born in Picayune, Mississippi, on February 23, 1943.  He received his B.A. in 1965 and his M.A.in 1966 from  Mississippi College.  In 1970 he earned his  Ph.D.from the University of South Carolina.  For twenty-seven years he was Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi and the editor of The Southern Quarterly. 

During the summer of 2004, Dr. Polk was the featured speaker at an international conference on William Faulkner, sponsored by the Japanese William Faulkner Society in Tokyo. He also taught a mini-seminar on "William Faulkner and Southern Culture" at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan.

In the fall of 2004 Noel Polk joined the English Department at Mississippi State University and became the editor of  the Mississippi Quarterly, a scholarly journal of Southern culture, past and present, which is published by MSU's College of Arts and Sciences.  He now lives in Starkville, Mississippi.  Polk is a specialist in American fiction and  has published and lectured widely in this country, Europe, Japan and the former Soviet Union on the works of Faulkner and Welty. He currently is in the process of editing Faulkner's works for three publishers: Library of America, Random House and Vintage International. Also, he recently edited a new edition of Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men for Harcourt Brace.  He is also working on a new edition of William Cather's The Song of the Lark.

Polk was named a 2005 Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Lodz, Poland, where he lectured for five weeks on the works of famed Mississippi writers William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.  Polk's more than twenty-five book publications include Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner (1996); Eudora Welty: A Bibliography of Her Work (1993); and Outside the Southern Myth (1997).

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Related Websites

Ole Miss Writers' page gives information about Noel Polk.

USM Department of English lists Polk as faculty member.

WHICH 'ALL THE KING'S MEN'? by Noel Polk, Reply by Joyce Carol Oates from The New York Times.

University of Mississippi Press publishes Outside the Southern Myth.

Noel Polk examines closely the way Faulkner experiments with language in New Essays on The Sound and the Fury.

William Faulkner: Novels 1930-1935 (As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, Light in August, Pylon) (Library of America) William Faulkner  Noel Polk (Editor)  Joseph Blotner (Editor).

Children of the Dark House:Text and Context in Faulkner by Noel Polk are essays by a distinguished Faulkner editor and scholar. Polk's stature as a critic meshes neatly with his work as an editor; his patent joy at the very sight of Faulkner manuscripts is inspiriting, and his professed commitment to Freudian readings is expressed in sensible, jargon-free discourse that is both witty and brilliant says J. M. Ditsky, Choice.

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