This book offers the first full-length study of the chess structures, motifs, and imagery in William Faulkner's Knight's Gambit . Wainwright looks at the importance of chess as a literary device and examines the structural analogy drawn between the game and linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure.

'This is an assured and highly original study of one of William Faulkner's most neglected works. Exposing the nineteenth-century chess master from New Orleans Paul Morphy as a key source of inspiration for Faulkner's conception of Gavin Stevens, Wainwright argues successfully for a reassessment of 'Knight's Gambit' as a key text in our understanding of the novelist's personal accommodation of postmodernism. At the same time, he provides a range of historically and theoretically informed insights into the engagement of twentieth-century literature with structuralist and poststructuralist thinking as well into as the psychology of chess as a game. My hat goes off to him.' David Rogers, Head of School of Humanities, Kingston University

'This study fills a critical absence in Faulkner studies and brings to that gap a fresh, innovative, and verifiable approach . . . Wainwright enters entirely new territory with this study . . . I recommend it highly.' - Joseph Urgo, Professor of English and President, St. Mary's College of Maryland