Cormac McCarthy and the writing of American spaces
By: Andrew Keller Estes
Series: Spatial practices : an interdisciplinary series in cultural history, geography and literature -- 16; Spatial practices -- 16.
Publisher: Rodopi
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Amsterdam; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9789042036291
Subjects: Landscapes in literature; Criticism and interpretation; National characteristics, American, in literature
Description: "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."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-234) and index.