フォークナーとソローに関する研究－彼らの人間と自然に対する考え方について－

Abstract

William Faulkner, a Deep Southerner,wrote woods and hunting stories including“The Bear”. They are stories of the Mississippi Delta. Faulkner also wished to be called“a farmer.” Henry David Thoreau, a New Englander, is often regarded as“a naturalist poet.” Both of them two loved nature a great deal and thought of the relation between man and nature very deeply.They contributed much to the world of American nature writing. In this paper the author discusses how they had their own close relation with wilderness and how they wrote on what they had thought on nature each in their own way. Faulkner's stories of wilderness cannot be discussed without mentions to the history of planters of the old South and racial problem. Whereas, Thoreau's writing, especially Walden, is the very philosophical and scientific study of nature in which he thought not only on nature itself but also on what man should learn from it and how they should live in their daily life. Though Faulkner and Thoreau lived in quite a different time and place, both of them seem to have pursued in wilderness what was very essential and valuable to man and his life.