Faulkner and the Ecology of the South

by Joseph R. Urgo (Editor), Ann J. Abadie (Editor)

Overview

In 1952, Faulkner noted the exceptional nature of the South when he characterized it as "the only really authentic region in the United States, because a deep indestructible bond still exists between man and his environment."

The essays collected in Faulkner and the Ecology of the South explore Faulkner's environmental imagination, seeking what Ann Fisher-Wirth calls the "ecological countermelody" of his texts. "Ecology" was not a term in common use outside the sciences in Faulkner's time. However, the word "environment" seems to have held deep meaning for Faulkner. Often he repeated his abiding interest in "man in conflict with himself, with his fellow man, or with his time and place, his environment."

Eco-criticism has led to a renewed interest among literary scholars for what in this volume Cecelia Tichi calls, "humanness within congeries of habitats and environments." Philip Weinstein draws on Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus. Eric Gary Anderson argues that Faulkner's fiction has much to do with ecology in the sense that his work often examines the ways in which human communities interact with the natural world. Francois Pitavy sees Faulkner's wilderness as unnatural in the ways it represents reflections of man's longings and frustrations. Throughout these essays, scholars illuminate in fresh ways the precarious ecosystem of Yoknapatawpha County.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781604730647
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	09/18/2009
Series:	Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	173
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Joseph R. Urgo, Oxford, Mississippi, is chair of the English department at the University of Mississippi. His books include Faulkner's Apocrypha, Novel Frames: Literature as Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture, and In the Age of Distraction, all published by University Press of Mississippi.

Ann J. Abadie is associate director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. She has coedited Faulkner and His Contemporaries, Faulkner and War, Faulkner and Postmodernism, and Faulkner at 100: Retrospect and Prospect, among other Faulkner volumes, all published by University Press of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	ix
	A Note on the Conference	xxiii
	"Old Man": Shackles, Chains, and Water Water Everywhere	3
	The Land's Turn	15
	Environed Blood: Ecology and Violence in The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary	30
	William Faulkner, Peter Matthiessen, and the Environmental Imagination	47
	The Enemy Within: Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy	61
	Is Faulkner Green? The Wilderness as Aporia	81
	The Ecology of Uncle Ike: Teaching Go Down, Moses with Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood	98
	Visceral Faulkner: Fiction and the Tug of the Organic World	115
	McCrady's La-FAY-ette County	133
	Collecting Faulkner	153
	Contributors	168
	Index	171