Morality in Cormac McCarthy's Fiction [electronic resource] : Souls at Hazard /
Hillier, Russell M.author.
This book argues that McCarthy’s works convey a profound moral vision and explores how McCarthy uses intertextuality, moral philosophy, and questions of genre to advance that vision. Russell M. Hillier 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. Hillier 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 should appeal alike to readers, teachers, and scholars of Cormac McCarthy. .
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Chapter 1 -- Introduction -- Chapter 2. “Give the Devil His Due”: Judge Holden’s Design in Blood Meridian -- Chapter 3. “Antic Clay”?: The Competing Ethical Appeals of Blood Meridian -- Chapter 4. “A Knowing Deep in the Bone”: Cowboy Stoicism and Tragic Heroism in All the Pretty Horses -- Chapter 5. “Like Some Supplicant to the Darkness Over Them All”: The Good of John Grady Cole in Cities of the Plain -- Chapter 6. “Nothing is Crueler Than a Coward”: No Country for Old Men and The Counselor as Tragic Fables of the Contemporary Southwest -- Chapter 7. Coda — The Good of Story in The Road -- Bibliography -- Index.
This book argues that McCarthy’s works convey a profound moral vision and explores how McCarthy uses intertextuality, moral philosophy, and questions of genre to advance that vision. Russell M. Hillier 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. Hillier 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 should appeal alike to readers, teachers, and scholars of Cormac McCarthy. .
Literature, Modern—20th century.
Literature, Modern—21st century.
Ethics.
Contemporary Literature.
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Ethics.