AN INSIGHT OF “THE KENTUCKY TRAGEDY" THROUGH ANN COOKE IN THE EYES OF RACHEL JORDAN IN ROBERT PENN WARREN’S WORLD ENOUGH AND TIME

Robert Penn Warren was the only author to receive a Pulitzer Prize in both fiction (once) and poetry (twice). He was one among the last surviving founders of the New Criticism that emerged in the South shortly after World War I. He also achieved a measure of commercial success that eludes many other serious artists. Though Warren drew extensively from his own past for the language, settings, and themes that appear in both his fiction and poetry, he approached all of this familiar material objectively and analytically. Warren's preoccupation with time and how the passage of years affects memory reveals itself in his extensive use of flashbacks to illustrate the often ironic nature of the relationship between the past and the present. Critics also find the abundance of background details in his work to be the evidence of his near-obsession with time. One such flashback is the illustration of "The Kentucky Tragedy" or "Murder of Sharp", in 1826, Jereboam O. Beauchamp was sentenced to be hanged for assassinating Colonel P. Sharp on the eve of the convening of the State Legislature. His wife, Ann Cooke, stabbed herself in jail and both were buried in the same coffin. Warren slightly varies from the actual incident, especially in portraying the main female protagonist Rachel, the novel World Enough and Time depicts the real Kentucky tragedy with slight variations with the real and fictional Ann Cooke who is Rachel.