Cormac McCarthy and the Writing of American Spaces

Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-420-3629-1
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 16, 239 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 381 g

Reihe: Spatial Practices

In Cormac McCarthy and the Writing of American Spaces Andrew Estes examines ideas about the land as they emerge in the later fiction of this important contemporary author. McCarthy's texts are shown to be part of larger narratives about American environments. Against the backdrop of the emerging discipline of environmental criticism, Estes investigates the way space has been constructed in U.S. American writing. Cormac McCarthy is found to be heir to diametrically opposed concepts of space: as something Americans embraced as either overwhelmingly positive and reinvigorating or as rather negative and threatening. McCarthy's texts both replicate this binary thinking about American environments and challenge readers to reconceive traditional ways of seeing space. Breaking new ground as to how literary landscapes and spaces are critically assessed this study seeks to examine the many detailed descriptions of the physical world in McCarthy on their own terms. Adding to so-called 'second wave' environmental criticism, it reaches beyond an earlier, limited understanding of the environment as 'nature' to consider both natural landscapes and built environments. Chapter one discusses the field of environmental criticism in reference to McCarthy while chapter two offers a brief narrative of conceptions of space in the U.S. Chapter three highlights trends in McCarthy criticism. Chapters four through eight provide close readings of McCarthy's later novels, from Blood Meridian to The Road.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Einzelne Autoren: Monographien & Biographien
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
Environmental Criticism and Cormac McCarthy
Environmental Criticism/Ecocriticism
Machine/Garden
Nature/Culture
Biocentrism/Anthropocentrism
Space/Place
Wilderness/Civilization
A Debate in American Literature: The Nature of U.S. Spaces
Columbus and the Edenic Trend
From the Best of Places to the Worst of Places
Vespucci and the Demonic Trend
“The Greatest Fact”: Buffon, De Pauw and Raynal
The Puritans
Hawthorne
Later Manifestations of the Positive View: Crèvecoeur
Jefferson: “The Cultivators of the Earth Are the Most Virtuous Citizens”
Emerson
Frederick Jackson Turner
The Dialectic of American Spaces
McCarthy Criticism
McCarthy as Author: Beginnings of Secondary Literature
Close Readings of Important Secondary Literature
Blood Meridian
The Environment in Blood Meridian
Judge Holden’s View
The Consequences of Judge Holden’s View: A Changing Environment
Optical Democracy
All the Pretty Horses
From the World of Blood Meridian to That of All the Pretty Horses
Space According to the Edenic Trend
Two Pictures of Horses: A Developing Notion of Wilderness
Space According to the Demonic Trend
Evil in Texas Versus Evil in Mexico
A Definition of Country in McCarthy
A New Way Forward
The Crossing
Borders
New Country
Language and the Land
The Trinity Test
No Country for Old Men
The Road
Apocalypse in American Literature
Environmental Criticism and (Post-)Apocalypse
A Close Reading of The Road: Ideas of the Natural and Technology
Rock City
The End of The Road: Biocentric Maps
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index