The Study Of William Faulkner's Novels In The Perspective Of Eco-theology

William Faulkner is one of the most important American novelists of the 20th century. His works carry the irresistible charm and challenges to the researchers for their abundant content and style of the complexity. Up till now there are a lot of research done on William Faulkner and his works. However, there still leaves room for further exploration of Faulkner to help form an integrated study. The dissertation, in the perspective of eco-theology, focuses on Faulkner's concern of environment, identity, time and community in order to provide an account for what Faulkner tries to tackle with—questions such as what man is, how man exists, and where man is going.The dissertation has three parts:introduction, body and conclusion.The introduction part first reviews the Faulkner study made so far in China and abroad, indicating the necessity of a further reassessment. It then makes a brief introduction of eco-theology and explains the feasibility of adopting the perception in the Faulkner study.The body part has four chapters. The first chapter focuses on the idea of environment. Seen from the perspective of ecology and eco-theology, "environment" implies the anthropocentric point of view and the dualistic thinking. Seen from the angle of religion, the Dualism of environment derives from the power of human beings obtained from God in order to rule the world. In the constructed image of the "wilderness" and racist ideas in American tradition lies the dualistic mode, which is known from the Puritan's view of the chosen people of God. Faulkner's "conflict between man and environment" reveals the isomorphic relationship of the different forms of oppression. The ecological disturbances revealed by Faulkner are the disturbances not only between man and nature, between man and man, but also between man and God from the point of view of eco-theology. The ecological consciousness in Faulkner reflects after all his religious thinking in nature.The second chapter focuses on Faulkner's idea of identity. After analyzing the cultural identity of the fictional characters and self-identity in the multi-angle narrative, the dissertation points out that the cultural identity is taken as a kind of "imagined communities" whose construction is also dualistic. With the changes of historical and cultural context, the identity of the character is always changing and unreliable. Faulkner makes it clear that man is created by God and God is the only criterion to measure man. It is therefore concluded eco-theologically that Faulkner believes man's identity made by God.The third chapter focuses on Faulkner's idea of time. There are a variety of time patterns in his novels. The historical lineal time is secular in nature and is constantly passing away desperately and irreversibly. Faulkner on the other hand has his characters transcend the worldly time constraint by locating them in the sphere of the sacred time. The eco-theologian Jurgen Moltmann's view of "the synchronization of historical time and natural time" could help us understand Faulkner's effort of coping with the dynamic time and the static time, so that one could transcend history while living in the historical circumstances.Chapter four focuses on Faulkner's idea of community. His idea of community is the result of his exploration of a new mode of human existence and the human way of living. The myth of the South and even the myth of America foretell the disintegration of the culture community. The blood tie in a family has been torn apart out of man's egotism and their failure of communication. Moltmann's eco-theology perspective tells that the world is a community of creation in which God dwells with the power of the Holy Spirit, in which man as the creation of God together with all the other affiliated creations represents what God endows to them through the Trinity of God—the mutual introjecting, mutual dwelling and mutual infiltrating. In Faulkner's works, the natural women and foolish chaos embody the "complete man". What Isaac McCaslin in Go Down, Moses reveals about the community of Holy Spirit resided in the ancient wilderness can be taken as the home for human beings in Faulkner's art world.The conclusion of the dissertation summarizes Faulkner's criticism for the dualistic mode and dominative rationality, his demand for man's identity of God's creation, and his wish for an ecological community. Faulkner's writings provide the world in the present ecological crisis with rich intellectual resources, and his anticipation for man's future can be taken as a goal for human beings to follow.