Title: Legal Cases and Paths to Justice in Faulkner’s “Snopes Trilogy”

Abstract: William Faulkner’s “Snopes Trilogy” presents the dilemma of justice in the transitional period of Southern American society through a dialectical narrative of law and morality. This paper focuses on the key legal cases and the “literary trial” of Flem Snopes, the manipulator of the law in the trilogy. From the dual perspectives of Posner’s “legal pragmatism” and Nussbaum’s “poetic justice,” it reveals the trilogy’s exposure and criticism of judicial alienation and moral crisis. Faulkner deconstructs the singular standard of justice through complex narratives, transforms the novels into a “courtroom” and invites readers to question the essence of justice within the gap between legality and legitimacy. This is precisely the intervention and redemption of literature as the third path to justice beyond law and morality in social reality.

Keywords: William Faulkner, “Snopes Trilogy,” law, poetic justice, literary trial

Authors: Haiyan Cai, Professor, School of Humanities and Communication, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China; Minmin Luo, School of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.03.011