Cormac McCarthy's Maps and Mazes

Tracing the Critical Reception
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-64014-192-6
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 192 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

Reihe: Literary Criticism in Perspective

Traces the scholarly conversation on McCarthy, an ever-changing and challenging author who asked big questions, from his obscure beginnings to the height of his fame and beyond.

From the beginning of a career that encapsulated decades-long obscurity, best-selling fame, and a Pulitzer Prize, Cormac McCarthy engaged with big questions. Are people inherently violent? Inherently moral? How do we understand the divine? How do we understand each other-if at all? What is the nature of reality? What does it mean to be human? These are philosophical questions, but McCarthy didn't write philosophical treatises: he wrote novels, plays, and screenplays that engage with his many and varied interests. Scholarship on McCarthy has addressed those questions and interests, and taken as a whole, it shows how his work takes us from deep dives into the details of historical context, regional identity, and literary allusion to ways of understanding the world more broadly.

Until McCarthy's death in 2023, scholars continually adapted to an author who experimented with differing forms, genres, and settings, all in an effort to capture big-picture truths. This study traces the critical engagement with McCarthy's work through his changes in genre, style, and interests. It is the story of an ongoing scholarly conversation that follows McCarthy's big questions and posits what some of the answers might be.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Peebles, Stacey

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Philosophie: Allgemeines, Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Discovering McCarthy
1: Early Years: Addressing the "Writer's Writer"
2: The Question of Nihilism: The First Scholarly Monograph and Beyond
3: The Man Himself, His Regions, and His Reading
4: The Field Expands: Economics and Ecology
5: The Field Expands: Archives and Adaptation
6: Big Pictures: Religion, Philosophy, and Science
Conclusion: Scholarship and Legacy
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Peebles, Stacey
STACEY PEEBLES is H.W. Stodghill, Jr. and Adele H. Stodghill Professor of English and Chair of Film Studies, Centre College, Danville, KY.