Faulkner’s Charismatic Megaflora: Critical Plant Studies and the US South

Since ecocriticism emerged as a distinct subfield of literary and cultural studies, scholars have focused on William Faulkner’s wide-ranging fictional investigations of ecological topics. In this recent greening of Faulkner studies, the vegetal life of Faulkner’s real and imagined terrain receives far less attention than his charismatic megafauna. Commentators’ blindness to plants is addressed here by utilizing theory from the emerging field of critical plant studies. Trees, Faulkner’s most charismatic megaflora, belong at the center of his stylistic and thematic practices in As I Lay Dying (1930), Light in August (1932), and Go Down, Moses (1942).