Faulkner and Environmental Imagination: Semiotics of Culture, Nature and Human Nature in The Bear

Abstract

The research is a semiotic study of the Faulkner Environmental Imagination in The Bear. Ecological perspective has broadened the constructions of environment in literary texts and contemporary literary theory. Nature, in this paper, is seen as a dynamic signifier acquiring new significations against the background of culture and human nature. Besides nature is also seen as a “text” in which the relationship between the human and non-human can be signified through contextual discourse. The descriptive-analytical approach is followed. The main results of the research paper show how Faulkner’s novella The Bear explores the philosophical and ethical concerns of environment in its ever-changing semiophere.