For example, in Sartoris, Faulkner describes with gentle sarcasm the gradual exageration of a family memory into a knightly legend:
. . . as [Aunt Jenny] grew older the tale itself grew richer and richer, taking on a mellow splendor like wine; until what had been a hare-brained prank of two heedless and reckless boys wild with their own youth had become a gallant and finely tragical focal point to which the history of the race had been raised from out the old miasmic swamps of spiritual sloth by two angels valiantly fallen and strayed, altering the course of human events and purging the souls of men.