What Else Can Nature Mean: An Ecocritical Perspective on Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60076658%3A12210%2F19%3A43900414" target="_blank" >RIV/60076658:12210/19:43900414 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://anglistika.phil.muni.cz/media/3197579/thepes_8_2019_2_3.pdf" target="_blank" >https://anglistika.phil.muni.cz/media/3197579/thepes_8_2019_2_3.pdf</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

What Else Can Nature Mean: An Ecocritical Perspective on Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction

Original language description

Cormac McCarthy’s natural imagery has always attracted critical attention as a significant aspect of his fiction, since the mere volume of natural descriptions indicates their importance in the texts. However, McCarthy’s nature was broadly perceived as symbolic, or as a setting device embedding the works in the the environments of Tennessee and the West. McCarthy’s natural imagery was first thoroughly studied by Georg Guillemin and Dianne C. Luce in their monographs The Pastoral Vision of Cormac McCarthy (2004) and Reading the World: Cormac McCarthy’s Tennessee Period (2009). Since then, other critics such as Andrew Keller Estes have explored various aspects of McCarthy’s natural imagery and the relationship between the human and non-human world and contributed to discussion on McCarthy’s natural environment and its functions in the texts. Following ecocritical theoretical framework of Lawrence Buell who suggests understanding nature and culture as inseparable domains with mutual influence instead of seeing them as isolated counterparts, this paper argues that reading McCarthy’s novels with environmental awareness significantly alters their interpretation. The analysis of McCarthy’s method of describing the natural environment and processes demonstrates that McCarthy’s nature should not be interpreted as a purely aesthetic object, but rather as a means towards the revision of American history, and that his critical stance towards anthropocentrism reveals the ethical orientation of his fiction.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

60206 - Specific literatures

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Theory and Practice in English Studies

ISSN

1805-0859

e-ISSN

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Volume of the periodical

8

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

17

Pages from-to

43-60

UT code for WoS article

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EID of the result in the Scopus database

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