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For almost three decades, Cormac McCarthy solidified his reputation as an American "writer's writer" with remarkable novels such as his Appalachian Tales, The Orchard Keeper, Outer Dark, Child of God, Suttree, and his terrifying Western masterpiece, Blood Meridian. Then, with the publication of All the Pretty Horses, the first work of his celebrated Border Trilogy in 1992, McCarthy's popularity exploded on to a world stage. As his reputation burgeoned with the publications of The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, the critical response to McCarthy has grown apace.
Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism by John Cant Pdf
This overview of McCarthy’s published work to date, including: the short stories he published as a student, his novels, stage play and TV film script, locates him as a icocolastic writer, engaged in deconstructing America’s vision of itself as a nation with an exceptionalist role in the world. Introductory chapters outline his personal background and the influences on his early years in Tennessee whilst each of his works is dealt with in a separate chapter listed in chronological order of publication.
Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature by Theda Wrede Pdf
The romantic perception of the American Southwest as a wild and dangerous frontier where heroic settlers prove their endurance has often responded to a common human desire to escape from the pressures of civilization and experience an “authentic” relationship with nature. This idealized notion about life in the Southwest, however, has contributed the subjugation of the indigenous populations and the natural world while helping rationalize the conquest of both. In Myth and Environment in Recent Southwestern Literature, Theda Wrede brings contemporary Southwestern American literature under the microscope to examine the ways in which the mythic narrative has influenced attitudes toward the land in the region. Focusing on popular novels by Corrmac McCarthy, Barbara Kingsolver, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Denise Chávez, Wrede explores the psychology behind the myth and discusses the ways in which the four authors deploy the mythic narrative, interrogate its validity, and offer visions for alternative modes of inhabiting the Southwest. In combining ideas from a culturally sensitive ecofeminist theory, psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, and literary studies, the study offers an innovative conceptual framework for discussions about environmental responsibility in the twenty-first century. Finally, it also encourages its readers to partake in the process of mythogenesis by imagining “sustainable” narratives to help rescue the promise of the Southwest for the new millennium.
A collection of original, stimulating interpretations of key texts by Cormac McCarthy, designed for students and edited and written by leading scholars in the field
This definitive assessment of Cormac McCarthy’s novels captures the interactions among the literary and mythic elements, the social dynamics of violence, and the natural world in The Orchard Keeper, Child of God, Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, and The Road. Elegantly written and deeply engaged with previous scholarship as well as interviews with the novelist, this study provides a comprehensive introduction to McCarthy’s work while offering an insightful new analysis. Drawing on René Girard’s mimetic theory, mythography, thermodynamics, and information science, Markus Wierschem identifies a literary apocalypse at the center of McCarthy’s work, one that unveils another buried deep within the history, religion, and myths of American and Western culture.
The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical by Hanna Boguta-Marchel Pdf
The most intriguing aspect of Cormac McCarthy’s writing is the irresistible premonition that his sentences carry an exceptional potential, that after each subsequent reading they surprise us with increasingly deeper layers of meaning, which are often in complete contradiction to the readers’ initial intuitions. His novels belong to the kind that we dream about at night, that follow us and do not let themselves be forgotten. Cormac McCarthy’s prose has been read in the light of a variety of theories, ranging from Marxist criticism, the pastoral tradition, Gnostic theology, the revisionist approach to the American Western, to feminist and eco-critical methodology. The perspective offered in The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical is an existentialist theological approach, which proposes a reading of McCarthy that focuses on the issue of evil and violence as it is dealt with in his novels. “Evil,” unquestionably being a metaphysical category and, as a result, quite commonly pronounced passé, is a challenging and overwhelming topic, which nevertheless deeply concerns all of us. Boguta-Marchel’s book is therefore an attempt to confront a theme that is an unpopular object of scholarly examination and, at the same time, a commonly shared experience in the everyday life of all human beings. The book follows the pattern of an increasingly in-depth analysis of the drama of evil that is omnipresent in McCarthy’s books: from the level of the visual (grotesque images, hyperbolic depictions of violence, cinematic precision of matter-of-fact descriptions), through the level of events (circularity and repetitiveness of action, characters conceptualizing and enacting the struggle between predetermined fate and good will), to the level of the metaphysical (existential crises, grappling with the idea and the person of God, biblical allusions reappearing in the text). This way, The Evil, the Fated, the Biblical provides a complete picture of McCarthy’s contest with one of the most troublesome issues that humanity has ever faced.
Cormac McCarthy, the author of such works as Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, is one of America's greatest living writers--an uncompromising examiner of the depths of human depravity, the nature of evil, and the bonds that endure. This companion is intended for both the scholar and lay reader seeking a comprehensive understanding of McCarthy's body of work. Alphabetically ordered entries offer analysis of novels, characters, motifs, allusions, plays, and themes, as well as commentary on events, people and places related to McCarthy scholarship. Most entries include a selected bibliography for further reading. A biographical introduction provides information on the life of this reclusive author, and discussion topics are provided as an aid for instructors.
Religion in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction by Manuel Broncano Pdf
This book addresses the religious scope of Cormac McCarthy’s fiction, one of the most controversial issues in studies of his work. Current criticism is divided between those who find a theological dimension in his works, and those who reject such an approach on the grounds that the nihilist discourse characteristic of his narrative is incompatible with any religious message. McCarthy’s tendencies toward religious themes have become increasingly more acute, revealing that McCarthy has adopted the biblical language and rhetoric to compose an "apocryphal" narrative of the American Southwest while exploring the human innate tendency to evil in the line of Herman Melville and William Faulkner, both literary progenitors of the writer. Broncano argues that this apocryphal narrative is written against the background of the Bible, a peculiar Pentateuch in which Blood Meridian functions as the Book of Genesis, the Border Trilogy functions as the Gospels, and No Country for Old Men as the Book of Revelation, while The Road is the post-apocalyptic sequel. This book analyzes the novels included in what Broncano defines as the South-Western cycle (from Blood Meridian to The Road) in search of the religious foundations that support the narrative architecture of the texts.
American Mythologies by William Blazek,Michael K. Glenday Pdf
In its more than three decades of existence, the discipline of American studies has been reliably unreliable, its boundaries and assumptions forever shifting as it continuously repositions itself to better address the changing character of American life, literature, and culture. American Mythologies is a challenging new look at the current reinvention of American studies, a reinvention that has questioned the whole notion of what "American"—let alone "American studies"—means. Essays in the collection range widely in considering these questions, from the effect of Muhammad Ali on Norman Mailer's writings about boxing to the interactions of myth and memory in the fictions of Jayne Anne Phillips to the conflicted portrayal of the American West in Cormac McCarthy's novels. Four essays in the collection focus on Native American authors, including Leslie Marmon Silko and Gerald Vizenor, while another considers Louise Erdrich's novels in the context of Ojibwa myth. By bringing together perspectives on American studies from both Europe and America, American Mythologies provides a clear picture of the current state of the discipline while pointing out fruitful directions for its future.
Cormac McCarthy’s Borders and Landscapes by Louise Jillett Pdf
Cormac McCarthy's work is attracting an increasing number of scholars and critics from a range of disciplines within the humanities and beyond, from political philosophy to linguistics and from musicology to various branches of the sciences. Cormac McCarthy's Borders and Landscapes contributes to this developing field of research, investigating the way McCarthy's writings speak to other works within the broader fields of American literature, international literature, border literature, and other forms of comparative literature. It also explores McCarthy's literary antecedents and the movements out of which his work has emerged, such as modernism, romanticism, naturalism, eco-criticism, genre-based literature (western, southern gothic), folkloric traditions and mythology.
This book was written to venture beyond interpretations of Cormac McCarthy's characters as simple, antinomian, and non-psychological; and of his landscapes as unrelated to the violent arcs of often orphaned and always emotionally isolated and socially detached characters. As McCarthy usually eschews direct indications of psychology, his landscapes allow us to infer much about their motivations. The relationship of ambivalent nostalgia for domesticity to McCarthy's descriptions of space remains relatively unexamined at book length, and through less theoretical application than close reading. By including McCarthy's latest book, this study offer the only complete study of all nine novels. Within McCarthy studies, this book extends and complicates a growing interest in space and domesticity in his work. The author combines a high regard for McCarthy's stylistic prowess with a provocative reading of how his own psychological habits around gender issues and family relations power books that only appear to be stories of masculine heroics, expressions of misogynistic fear, or antinomian rejections of civilized life.
An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction by Alan Bilton Pdf
Don DeLillo, Paul Auster, Cormac McCarthy, Rolando Hinojosa, E. Annie Proulx, Bret Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, and Thomas Pynchon: An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction introduces the work of a range of key American authors, all of whom can be said to engage with postmodernism. Exploring the vitality and energy of contemporary writing in light of pessimistic proclamations on the state of postmodern American culture, Bilton highlights the tension between "realistic" description and linguistic self-consciousness in contemporary fiction. In addition, by addressing a central problem in literary theory—its neglect of literary discussion and the practice of reading—An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction is able to present a working model for reading a text theoretically. As an introductory text, it assumes no prior knowledge of the authors of the novels discussed. To encourage understanding and aid further study, the following features are included: * GLOSSARY OF CRITICAL AND LITERARY TERMS * BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EACH AUTHOR'S WORKS * BIOGRAPHY OF EACH AUTHOR * GUIDE TO FURTHER READING * THEMATIC AND AUTHOR INDICES
Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim: Types and Distortions of Spiritual Vocation in the Fiction of Wendell Berry and Cormac McCarthy provides a reading of characters in the novels and short stories of two important contemporary American writers through the lens of spiritual theology. Applying the work of Rowan Williams, Nicholas Lash, and others, Edmondson constructs a theological framework that takes seriously the notion of Christian spirituality not as an invitation to flee from this world, but rather as a way of life that seeks reconciliation and joy within this world, encountering and embracing Godʼs presence within everyday existence, in the contexts of such realities as corporeality, communities, and the created order as a whole. This framework is then applied to the fiction of two American authors, Wendell Berry and Cormac McCarthy. By comparing these writers, the characters they create, and the worldviews that shape their narratives, Priest, Prophet, Pilgrim demonstrates, in ways that can be applied to other works and other characters, how the reading of fiction can inform the pursuit of the spiritual life.
A Bloody and Barbarous God investigates the relationship between gnosticism, a system of thought that argues that the cosmos is evil and that the human spirit must strive for liberation from manifest existence, and the perennial philosophy, a study of the highest common factor in all esoteric religions, and how these traditions have influenced the later novels of Cormac McCarthy, namely, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. Mundik argues that McCarthy continually strives to evolve an explanatory theodicy throughout his work, and that his novels are, to a lesser or greater extent, concerned with the meaning of human existence in relation to the presence of evil and the nature of the divine.