"In Another Country": Faulkner's A Fable

Abstract

Although the setting of A Fable is ostensibly France during the years of World War I, William Faulkner seems to have rejected this unambiguous designation of the time and place of his novel. In a letter to Robert Haas written in 1947, Faulkner explains that, for him, the locale of A Fable is "fabulous" and "imaginary."1 As if to underscore this mythic foreign setting, the phrase "in another country" echoes like a refrain throughout the novel. While the phrase crops up frequently in A Fable, its most conspicuous incarnation is as a fragment of a literary quotation twice invoked by the runner. This repeated quotation, which the runner chants like an incantation, has mystified commentators since the allusion does not appear to have any obvious connection to its immediate context. 2 However, the runner's literary excerpt is not an empty rhetorical flourish in that the quotation is demonstrably relevant to the large issues that Faulkner's novel explores. A Fable, as its decorative crosses attest, is a religious allegory, and the "in another country" allusion, in combination with other allusions in Faulkner's text, addresses the central subject of all religious writing, the problem of human evil.