Yoknapatawpha County

Yoknapatawpha County (pronounced [jɒknəpəˈtɔfə]) is a fictional county in northwestern Mississippi, where several novels by William Faulkner take place. Flanked to the north by the Tallahatchie River and to the south by the Yoknapatawpha, both actually existing, it roughly corresponds to real-life Lafayette County. Its capital is the equally fictional Jefferson; The county covers about 6,200 km², almost half of it covered by pine forests.

The county's name, pronounced [jɒknəpəˈtɔfə], comes from the Chickasaw words yocona and petopha, and means "divided land". Faulker claimed that as a compound word it would mean 'water flowing slowly over the meadow', but this has not been confirmed.

Originally Chickasaw territory, white colonies appeared in the mid-1800s. Prior to the Civil War, the county consisted of immense plantations: those of Louis Grenier in the southeast, the McCaslins in the northeast, the Sutpens in the northwest, and the Compson and Sartoris in the vicinity of Jefferson. The county later consisted mostly of small farms. In 1939, the estimated population was 25,611, of whom 6,928 were white and 19,313 were black.

Some stories set in Yoknapatawpha County

• Sartoris (1929)
• The noise and the fury (1929)
• While I'm dying (1930)
• Sanctuary (1931)
• Light of August (1932)
• Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
• The undefeated (1938)
• The Hamlet (1940)
• Moses descend (1942)
• Intruder in the dust (1948)
• In the city (1957)
• Mansion (1959)
• The Reivers (1962)
• Flags in the Dust (1973)
• A Rose for Emily (1973)

The play Requiem for a Nun (1951) also takes place in Yoknapatawpha County.

The television series Colony (2016) references Yoknapatawpha as the name of Katie Bowman's bar.