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 counter-melody” 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 abiding meaning for Faulkner. Often he repeated his abiding interest in “man in conflict with himself, with his follow 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 with congeries of habitats and environments.” Philip Weinstein draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus. Eric Gary Anderson argues that F