Author: Matthew L. Potts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 150133073X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
"Reconceives the moral significance of Cormac McCarthy's novels through a constructive engagement with postmodern theory and Christian theology"--
Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament
Author: Matthew L. Potts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 150133073X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
"Reconceives the moral significance of Cormac McCarthy's novels through a constructive engagement with postmodern theory and Christian theology"--
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 150133073X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
"Reconceives the moral significance of Cormac McCarthy's novels through a constructive engagement with postmodern theory and Christian theology"--
Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament
Author: Matthew L. Potts
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501306561
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Although scholars have widely acknowledged the prevalence of religious reference in the work of Cormac McCarthy, this is the first book on the most pervasive religious trope in all his works: the image of sacrament, and in particular, of eucharist. Informed by postmodern theories of narrative and Christian theologies of sacrament, Matthew Potts reads the major novels of Cormac McCarthy in a new and insightful way, arguing that their dark moral significance coheres with the Christian theological tradition in difficult, demanding ways. Potts develops this account through an argument that integrates McCarthy's fiction with both postmodern theory and contemporary fundamental and sacramental theology. In McCarthy's novels, the human self is always dispossessed of itself, given over to harm, fate, and narrative. But this fundamental dispossession, this vulnerability to violence and signs, is also one uniquely expressed in and articulated by the Christian sacramental tradition. By reading McCarthy and this theology alongside postmodern accounts of action, identity, subjectivity, and narration, Potts demonstrates how McCarthy exploits Christian theology in order to locate the value of human acts and relations in a way that mimics the dispossessing movement of sacramental signs. This is not to claim McCarthy for theology, necessarily, but it is to assert that McCarthy generates his account of what human goodness might look like in the wake of metaphysical collapse through the explicit use of Christian theology.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501306561
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 235
Book Description
Although scholars have widely acknowledged the prevalence of religious reference in the work of Cormac McCarthy, this is the first book on the most pervasive religious trope in all his works: the image of sacrament, and in particular, of eucharist. Informed by postmodern theories of narrative and Christian theologies of sacrament, Matthew Potts reads the major novels of Cormac McCarthy in a new and insightful way, arguing that their dark moral significance coheres with the Christian theological tradition in difficult, demanding ways. Potts develops this account through an argument that integrates McCarthy's fiction with both postmodern theory and contemporary fundamental and sacramental theology. In McCarthy's novels, the human self is always dispossessed of itself, given over to harm, fate, and narrative. But this fundamental dispossession, this vulnerability to violence and signs, is also one uniquely expressed in and articulated by the Christian sacramental tradition. By reading McCarthy and this theology alongside postmodern accounts of action, identity, subjectivity, and narration, Potts demonstrates how McCarthy exploits Christian theology in order to locate the value of human acts and relations in a way that mimics the dispossessing movement of sacramental signs. This is not to claim McCarthy for theology, necessarily, but it is to assert that McCarthy generates his account of what human goodness might look like in the wake of metaphysical collapse through the explicit use of Christian theology.
Morality in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction
Author: Russell M. Hillier
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319469576
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
This book argues that McCarthy’s works convey a profound moral vision, and use intertextuality, moral philosophy, and questions of genre to advance that vision. It focuses upon the ways in which McCarthy’s fiction is in ceaseless conversation with literary and philosophical tradition, examining McCarthy’s investment in influential thinkers from Marcus Aurelius to Hannah Arendt, and poets, playwrights, and novelists from Dante and Shakespeare to Fyodor Dostoevsky and Antonio Machado. The book shows how McCarthy’s fiction grapples with abiding moral and metaphysical issues: the nature and problem of evil; the idea of God or the transcendent; the credibility of heroism in the modern age; the question of moral choice and action; the possibility of faith, hope, love, and goodness; the meaning and limits of civilization; and the definition of what it is to be human. This study will appeal alike to readers, teachers, and scholars of Cormac McCarthy.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319469576
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
This book argues that McCarthy’s works convey a profound moral vision, and use intertextuality, moral philosophy, and questions of genre to advance that vision. It focuses upon the ways in which McCarthy’s fiction is in ceaseless conversation with literary and philosophical tradition, examining McCarthy’s investment in influential thinkers from Marcus Aurelius to Hannah Arendt, and poets, playwrights, and novelists from Dante and Shakespeare to Fyodor Dostoevsky and Antonio Machado. The book shows how McCarthy’s fiction grapples with abiding moral and metaphysical issues: the nature and problem of evil; the idea of God or the transcendent; the credibility of heroism in the modern age; the question of moral choice and action; the possibility of faith, hope, love, and goodness; the meaning and limits of civilization; and the definition of what it is to be human. This study will appeal alike to readers, teachers, and scholars of Cormac McCarthy.
Tilt
Author: Brian C. Nixon
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532691416
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In Tilt: Finding Christ in Culture, Brian Nixon takes the reader on a voyage of discovery, traveling the currents of God’s presence in culture, summed up in four streams that define a noun: people, places, things, and ideas. In his journey, Nixon touches upon people as diverse as Andy Warhol, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Redford, and Georgia O’Keeffe; places such as Canterbury, England, and Las Vegas, Nevada; things as unique as typewriters, trains, and abstract art; and ideas as fascinating as mathematics and beauty. In these short impressionistic pieces, Nixon, with the curiosity of a journalist, elicits intelligent discussion and poetic articulations, prompting a head tilt from those who join him on a theo-cultural expedition.
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532691416
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
In Tilt: Finding Christ in Culture, Brian Nixon takes the reader on a voyage of discovery, traveling the currents of God’s presence in culture, summed up in four streams that define a noun: people, places, things, and ideas. In his journey, Nixon touches upon people as diverse as Andy Warhol, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Redford, and Georgia O’Keeffe; places such as Canterbury, England, and Las Vegas, Nevada; things as unique as typewriters, trains, and abstract art; and ideas as fascinating as mathematics and beauty. In these short impressionistic pieces, Nixon, with the curiosity of a journalist, elicits intelligent discussion and poetic articulations, prompting a head tilt from those who join him on a theo-cultural expedition.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy
Author: Stacey Peebles
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 160329483X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
In the decades since his 1992 breakout novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy has gained a reputation as one of the greatest contemporary American authors. Experimenting with genres such as the crime thriller, the post-apocalyptic novel, and the western, his work also engages with the aesthetics of cinema, and several of his novels have been adapted for the screen. While timely and relevant, his works use idiosyncratic language and contain intense, troubling portrayals of racism, sexism, and violence that can pose challenges for students. This volume offers strategies for guiding students through McCarthy's oeuvre, addressing all his novels as well as his published plays and screenplays. Part 1, "Materials," provides sources of biographical information and key scholarship on McCarthy. Essays in part 2, "Approaches," discuss subjects such as landscape and ecology, mythologies of the American West, film adaptations, and literary contexts and describe assignments that encourage students to write creatively and to examine their personal values.
Publisher: Modern Language Association
ISBN: 160329483X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
In the decades since his 1992 breakout novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy has gained a reputation as one of the greatest contemporary American authors. Experimenting with genres such as the crime thriller, the post-apocalyptic novel, and the western, his work also engages with the aesthetics of cinema, and several of his novels have been adapted for the screen. While timely and relevant, his works use idiosyncratic language and contain intense, troubling portrayals of racism, sexism, and violence that can pose challenges for students. This volume offers strategies for guiding students through McCarthy's oeuvre, addressing all his novels as well as his published plays and screenplays. Part 1, "Materials," provides sources of biographical information and key scholarship on McCarthy. Essays in part 2, "Approaches," discuss subjects such as landscape and ecology, mythologies of the American West, film adaptations, and literary contexts and describe assignments that encourage students to write creatively and to examine their personal values.
Evil and Creation
Author: David Luy
Publisher: Lexham Press
ISBN: 1683594355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
"My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth." Evil is an intruder upon a world created by God and declared good. Scripture emphasizes this: laments are regularly juxtaposed with declarations of God as creator. But evil is not merely a problem for the doctrine of creation. Rather, the doctrine of creation provides a hopeful response to evil. In Evil and Creation, David J. Luy, Matthew Levering, and George Kalantzis collect essays investigating how the doctrine of creation relates to moral and physical evil. Essayists pursue philosophical and theological analyses of evil rather than neatly solving the problem of evil itself. Including contributions from Constantine Campbell, Paul Blowers, and Paul Gavrilyuk, this volume draws upon biblical and patristic voices to produce constructive theology, considering topics ranging from vanity in Ecclesiastes and its patristic interpreters to animal suffering. Readers will gain a broader appreciation of evil and how to faithfully respond to it as well as a renewed hope in God as creator and judge.
Publisher: Lexham Press
ISBN: 1683594355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184
Book Description
"My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth." Evil is an intruder upon a world created by God and declared good. Scripture emphasizes this: laments are regularly juxtaposed with declarations of God as creator. But evil is not merely a problem for the doctrine of creation. Rather, the doctrine of creation provides a hopeful response to evil. In Evil and Creation, David J. Luy, Matthew Levering, and George Kalantzis collect essays investigating how the doctrine of creation relates to moral and physical evil. Essayists pursue philosophical and theological analyses of evil rather than neatly solving the problem of evil itself. Including contributions from Constantine Campbell, Paul Blowers, and Paul Gavrilyuk, this volume draws upon biblical and patristic voices to produce constructive theology, considering topics ranging from vanity in Ecclesiastes and its patristic interpreters to animal suffering. Readers will gain a broader appreciation of evil and how to faithfully respond to it as well as a renewed hope in God as creator and judge.
Professing Darkness
Author: D. Marcel DeCoste
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807182311
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Professing Darkness confirms the centrality of Catholic thought, imagery, and sacrament to the spiritual and ethical outlook of the work of Cormac McCarthy and, more specifically, its consistent assessment of Enlightenment values and their often-catastrophic realization in American history. D. Marcel DeCoste surveys McCarthy’s fiction from both his Tennessee and Southwest periods, with chapters devoted to eight of his published novels—from Outer Dark to The Road—and a conclusion that examines the writer’s screenplay for The Counselor and the duology of The Passenger and Stella Maris. DeCoste’s attentive, wide-ranging interpretations demonstrate that McCarthy’s work mounts a sustained critique of core Enlightenment ideals and their devastating results in the American context, especially for Indigenous peoples, the environment, the viability of community, and the integrity of a self irreducible to the status of a commodity. Professing Darkness shows that Roman Catholic understandings of Penance and Eucharist, along with specific Catholic teachings—such as those regarding the goodness of Creation, the nature of evil, the insufficiency of the self, and the radical invitation to conversion—enable McCarthy’s revelatory engagement with American Enlightenment. An important contribution to the ever-expanding critical literature on a towering contemporary author, Professing Darkness offers an innovative reading of both the spiritual and political valences of McCarthy’s writing.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807182311
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279
Book Description
Professing Darkness confirms the centrality of Catholic thought, imagery, and sacrament to the spiritual and ethical outlook of the work of Cormac McCarthy and, more specifically, its consistent assessment of Enlightenment values and their often-catastrophic realization in American history. D. Marcel DeCoste surveys McCarthy’s fiction from both his Tennessee and Southwest periods, with chapters devoted to eight of his published novels—from Outer Dark to The Road—and a conclusion that examines the writer’s screenplay for The Counselor and the duology of The Passenger and Stella Maris. DeCoste’s attentive, wide-ranging interpretations demonstrate that McCarthy’s work mounts a sustained critique of core Enlightenment ideals and their devastating results in the American context, especially for Indigenous peoples, the environment, the viability of community, and the integrity of a self irreducible to the status of a commodity. Professing Darkness shows that Roman Catholic understandings of Penance and Eucharist, along with specific Catholic teachings—such as those regarding the goodness of Creation, the nature of evil, the insufficiency of the self, and the radical invitation to conversion—enable McCarthy’s revelatory engagement with American Enlightenment. An important contribution to the ever-expanding critical literature on a towering contemporary author, Professing Darkness offers an innovative reading of both the spiritual and political valences of McCarthy’s writing.
Unguessed Kinships
Author: Steven Frye
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081736109X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
"It took six novels and nearly thirty years for Cormac McCarthy to find commercial success as a writer with the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses coming twenty-seven years after his debut. The second half of his long career brought major prizes, more bestsellers, and Hollywood adaptations of his work. The sharp upturn in McCarthy's readership, especially with the genre exercises No Country for Old Men and The Road, has obscured his commitment to a decidedly old-fashioned style of literature: naturalism. It is hardly a secret that McCarthy's work tends to darker themes: violence, brutality, warfare, the cruel indifference of nature. There is a bright line running from some of the core texts of literary naturalism in those themes, which would not be out of place in the writing of Jack London or Stephen Crane. But literary naturalism is much more than the oversimplified Darwinism that we often think of. Nature may well be red in tooth and claw, and humans are part of nature, but the humanity depicted in naturalist literature was capable of love, selflessness, and spirituality in addition to atavism and monstrosity. That is the naturalism that comes across in McCarthy's oeuvre. In Unguessed Kinships, Steven Frye complicates our understanding of literary naturalism through a chronological treatment of McCarthy's body of work. Beginning with an overview of the century-long critical engagement with naturalism, Frye carefully shows how the naturalist idea has matured in the context of modernity and postmodernity, particularly in its relationship with the American South and West, regions that each inspired a distinct phase of McCarthy's long career. In his novels and plays, McCarthy engages both explicitly and obliquely with the project of Manifest Destiny, both in the western drama of Blood Meridian and the twentieth-century settings of TVA-era Knoxville in the Tennessee novels and the atomic frontier of Alamogordo in Cities of the Plain. The concerns of these works are not explicitly American in Frye's reading: deep philosophical and religious questions are asked, drawing on ancient Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, Nietzsche, and more contemporary inquiries. Frye argues for McCarthy not merely as a naturalist writer but as a naturalist in the most profound sense. Unguessed Kinships includes biographical and historical context in each chapter, widening the appeal of the text to not just naturalists or McCarthy scholars, but anyone studying the literature of the South or the West. While the influential scholarship of Vereen Bell made a claim for nihilism as central to McCarthy, recent work has focused on the various philosophical, religious, and metaphysical underpinnings of his writing. In Unguessed Kinships, Steven Frye takes up the importance of both the natural world and naturalism to one of the most significant American writers of recent vintage"--
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 081736109X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 194
Book Description
"It took six novels and nearly thirty years for Cormac McCarthy to find commercial success as a writer with the National Book Award-winning All the Pretty Horses coming twenty-seven years after his debut. The second half of his long career brought major prizes, more bestsellers, and Hollywood adaptations of his work. The sharp upturn in McCarthy's readership, especially with the genre exercises No Country for Old Men and The Road, has obscured his commitment to a decidedly old-fashioned style of literature: naturalism. It is hardly a secret that McCarthy's work tends to darker themes: violence, brutality, warfare, the cruel indifference of nature. There is a bright line running from some of the core texts of literary naturalism in those themes, which would not be out of place in the writing of Jack London or Stephen Crane. But literary naturalism is much more than the oversimplified Darwinism that we often think of. Nature may well be red in tooth and claw, and humans are part of nature, but the humanity depicted in naturalist literature was capable of love, selflessness, and spirituality in addition to atavism and monstrosity. That is the naturalism that comes across in McCarthy's oeuvre. In Unguessed Kinships, Steven Frye complicates our understanding of literary naturalism through a chronological treatment of McCarthy's body of work. Beginning with an overview of the century-long critical engagement with naturalism, Frye carefully shows how the naturalist idea has matured in the context of modernity and postmodernity, particularly in its relationship with the American South and West, regions that each inspired a distinct phase of McCarthy's long career. In his novels and plays, McCarthy engages both explicitly and obliquely with the project of Manifest Destiny, both in the western drama of Blood Meridian and the twentieth-century settings of TVA-era Knoxville in the Tennessee novels and the atomic frontier of Alamogordo in Cities of the Plain. The concerns of these works are not explicitly American in Frye's reading: deep philosophical and religious questions are asked, drawing on ancient Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, Nietzsche, and more contemporary inquiries. Frye argues for McCarthy not merely as a naturalist writer but as a naturalist in the most profound sense. Unguessed Kinships includes biographical and historical context in each chapter, widening the appeal of the text to not just naturalists or McCarthy scholars, but anyone studying the literature of the South or the West. While the influential scholarship of Vereen Bell made a claim for nihilism as central to McCarthy, recent work has focused on the various philosophical, religious, and metaphysical underpinnings of his writing. In Unguessed Kinships, Steven Frye takes up the importance of both the natural world and naturalism to one of the most significant American writers of recent vintage"--
Shreds of Matter
Author: Julius Greve
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
ISBN: 1512603414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Shreds of Matter: Cormac McCarthy and the Concept of Nature offers a nuanced and innovative take on McCarthy's ostensible localism and, along with it, the ecocentric perspective on the world that is assumed by most critics. In opposing the standard interpretations of McCarthy's novels as critical either of persisting American ideologies - such as manifest destiny and imperialism - or of the ways in which humanity has laid waste to planet Earth, Greve instead emphasizes the author's interest both in the history of science and in the mythographical developments of religious discourse. Greve aims to counter traditional interpretations of McCarthy's work and at the same time acknowledge their partial truth, taking into account the work of Friedrich W. J. Schelling and Lorenz Oken, contemporary speculative realism, and Bertrand Westphal's geocriticism. Further, newly discovered archival material sheds light on McCarthy's immersion in the metaphysical question par excellence: What is nature?
Publisher: Dartmouth College Press
ISBN: 1512603414
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
Shreds of Matter: Cormac McCarthy and the Concept of Nature offers a nuanced and innovative take on McCarthy's ostensible localism and, along with it, the ecocentric perspective on the world that is assumed by most critics. In opposing the standard interpretations of McCarthy's novels as critical either of persisting American ideologies - such as manifest destiny and imperialism - or of the ways in which humanity has laid waste to planet Earth, Greve instead emphasizes the author's interest both in the history of science and in the mythographical developments of religious discourse. Greve aims to counter traditional interpretations of McCarthy's work and at the same time acknowledge their partial truth, taking into account the work of Friedrich W. J. Schelling and Lorenz Oken, contemporary speculative realism, and Bertrand Westphal's geocriticism. Further, newly discovered archival material sheds light on McCarthy's immersion in the metaphysical question par excellence: What is nature?
The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy
Author: Jonathan Elmore
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807183407
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy presents eleven essays of original scholarship that undertake a programmatic reassessment of McCarthy’s literary and philosophical worldview. Examining issues of race, morality, history, metaphysics, law, economics, and ecology in McCarthy’s writing reveals how these themes intersect in an overarching, positive gesture that characterizes his work. Taken together, the essays offer a more expansive understanding of McCarthy’s critique of contemporary society, while providing new clarity on his vision of alternate ways of living and community beyond their present life-denying manifestations.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807183407
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
The Evolving Project of Cormac McCarthy presents eleven essays of original scholarship that undertake a programmatic reassessment of McCarthy’s literary and philosophical worldview. Examining issues of race, morality, history, metaphysics, law, economics, and ecology in McCarthy’s writing reveals how these themes intersect in an overarching, positive gesture that characterizes his work. Taken together, the essays offer a more expansive understanding of McCarthy’s critique of contemporary society, while providing new clarity on his vision of alternate ways of living and community beyond their present life-denying manifestations.