Abstract
In 1985 American author Cormac McCarthy published Blood Meridian, a novel that is set against the backdrop of the conquest of the West, a momentous and still relevant process that has acquired quasi-mythical dimensions throughout history and that is undoubtedly embedded in the United States’ national consciousness. In this article I will show the different mechanisms employed by Cormac McCarthy to deconstruct conventional Western narratives that glorify and sanction the Westward expansion as a courageous endeavour that shaped the American nation, hence underplaying the more devastating and pernicious side of this chapter of America’s imperialistic undertakings. To that end, I will argue that McCarthy contests the main tenets of the crucial 1893 Frontier Thesis proposed by Frederick Jackson Turner, in particular the depiction of American colonial expansion as a source of progress and democratic development; likewise I will contend that, in Blood Meridian, McCarthy aligns himself with the ideas of New Western Historians that offer a revisionist perspective of the country’s past, revealing such brutality and wickedness exerted in the appropriation of the western territories that seemed to deprive the process of any hope of God’s mercy.
5. Works Cited
Brinkley, Alan. 1992. “The Western Historians Don’t Fence Them In”. The New York Times September 20. <https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/20/books/the-western-historians-don-t-fence-them-in.html> [accessed 13 January 2022].Search in Google Scholar
Broncano Rodríguez, Manuel. 2008. “Cormac McCarthy’s Grotesque Allegory in Blood Meridian”. Journal of English Studies 5: 31–46.10.18172/jes.119Search in Google Scholar
Buntline, Ned. 1887/2010. Buffalo Bill and His Adventures in the West. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.Search in Google Scholar
Dorson, James. 2013. “Demystifying the Judge: Law and Mythical Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”. Journal of Modern Literature 36.2: 105–121.10.2979/jmodelite.36.2.105Search in Google Scholar
Frye, Steven. 2009. Understanding Cormac McCarthy. Understanding Contemporary American Literature. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.Search in Google Scholar
Gomez, Adam. 2012. “Deus Vult: John L. O’Sullivan, Manifest Destiny, and American Democratic Messianism”. American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture 1.2: 237–262.10.1086/667616Search in Google Scholar
Grandin, Greg. 2019. The End of the Myth. New York: Metropolitan.Search in Google Scholar
Grey, Zane. 1912/2020. Riders of the Purple Sage. Orinda, CA: SeaWolf Press.Search in Google Scholar
How the West was Truly Won. 1962. Dir. George Marshall, Henry Hathaway, John Ford and Richard Thorpe. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Cinerama. DVD.Search in Google Scholar
Limerick, Patricia Nelson. 1987. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Search in Google Scholar
Limerick, Patricia Nelson and Richard White. 1994. The Frontier in American Culture. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.Search in Google Scholar
Luburić-Cvijanović, Arijana. 2021. “Challenging the Western in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”. Annual Review of the Faculty of Philosophy, Novi Sad 46.2: 51–63.10.19090/gff.2021.2.51-63Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 1985/2010. Blood Meridian. London: Picador.Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 1992/2010. All the Pretty Horses. London: Picador. Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 1994/2010. The Crossing. London: Picador.Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 1998/2010. Cities of the Plain. New York: Vintage.Search in Google Scholar
McCarthy, Cormac. 2005/2010. No Country for Old Men. London: Picador.Search in Google Scholar
Morton, Adam David. 2015. “The Frontiers of Cormac Mccarthy”. Society + Space November 23. <https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-frontiers-of-cormac-mccarthy> [accessed 20 March 2023].Search in Google Scholar
Moos, Dan. 2002. “Lacking the Article Itself: Representation and History in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 2.1: 23–39.Search in Google Scholar
O’Sullivan, John L. 1845. “Annexation”. United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17.1: 5–10.Search in Google Scholar
Parten, Bennett. 2022. “Crossing the Blood Meridian: Cormac McCarthy and American History”. Los Angeles Review of Books February 9. <https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/crossing-the-blood-meridian-cormac-mccarthy-and-american-history/> [accessed 20 March 2023].Search in Google Scholar
Pughe, Thomas. 1994. “Revision and Vision: Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”. Revue francaise d’ettudes americaines 62: 371–382.10.3406/rfea.1994.1559Search in Google Scholar
Río Raigadas, David. 2004. “Cormac McCarthy’s Borderlands: Challenge to a Mythic Construct of the American West”. ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 25: 193–202.Search in Google Scholar
Shaviro, Steven. 1999. “‘The Very Life of Darkness’: A Reading of Blood Meridian”. In: Edwin T. Arnold and Dianne C. Luce (eds.). Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. 145–158.Search in Google Scholar
Sørensen, Bent. 2005. “Katabasis in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian”. Orbis Litterarum 60.1: 16–25.10.1111/j.1600-0730.2004.10812.xSearch in Google Scholar
Truby, John. 2022. The Anatomy of Genres. London: Picador.Search in Google Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson. 1893/1920. The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Folt and Company.Search in Google Scholar
Weyl, Walter.1912. The New Democracy. New York: The MacMillan Company.Search in Google Scholar
Wister, Owen. 1902/2022. The Virginian: A Horseman of the Plains. Glasgow: Good Press.Search in Google Scholar
Younesi, Mahshid and Hossein Pirnajmuddin. 2018. “Nostalgia and the Sublime in Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy”. Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 40.2: 45–62.10.28914/Atlantis-2018-40.2.03Search in Google Scholar
Zhan, Shuquan and Jiemin Feng. 2020. “Deconstruction and Subversion: Postmodern Narrative of Blood Meridian”. Advances in Social Science, Education, and Humanities Research 496: 815–818.Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- New Judgements on the Artistry of Andreas: The Case of Christ III
- The Kassel Fragment from an Early South English Legendary
- “Eene schoone engelsche troupe”: William Durham and His Company of Travelling Performers in Ghent (1713) and Germany (1724–1728)
- Contours of Status and Power: Seats and Sitting Postures in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend
- Resisting Ireland’s Necropolitics of Asylum: Refugee Voices in Irish Literature and the Arts
- No Country for God: The Brutality of Western Territorial Appropriation in Blood Meridian
- Rachel Seiffert: An Interview with Paula Romo-Mayor
- Reviews
- Michael Lapidge. 2023. Canterbury Glosses from the School of Theodore and Hadrian: The Leiden Glossary. Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 17/1–2, 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. 824 pp., 1 illustr., €135,00.
- Review
- Kerstin Majewski. 2022. The Ruthwell Cross and its Texts. A New Reconstruction and an Edition of “The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem”. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 132. Berlin: de Gruyter, 26 + 397 pp., 39 illustr., €154.95 (hc. and e-book).
- Olga Timofeeva. 2022. Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English: Records of Communities and People. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 13. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, xv + 204 pp., 29 tables, 14 figures, €99.00 | $149.00.
- Christoph Anton Xaver Hauf. 2021. Verbs of Speaking and the Linguistic Expression of Communication in the History of English. Munich Studies in English 47. Berlin: Lang, 324 pp., 52 figures, 36 tables, €76.70 Hardcover | €77.85 Ebook.
- Rebecca Brackmann. 2023. Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: Medievalism and National Crisis. Medievalism 23. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, xii + 235 pp., 14 illustr., £70.00 | $105.00 Hardcover, £29.95 | $24.99 Ebook.
- Carolin Harthan. 2022. Medially-Placed Linking Adverbials in Written Academic English: Usage Patterns and Functions. Munich Studies in English 49. Berlin: Lang, 340 pp., 41 figures, 51 tables, €83.20.
- Paul Dawson. 2023. The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel. Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 246 pp., $ 74.95.
- Olaf Kaltmeier, Mirko Petersen, Wilfried Raussert and Julia Roth (eds.). 2021. Cherishing the Past, Envisioning the Future: Entangled Practices of Heritage and Utopia in the Americas. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 163 pp., 3 illustr., € 23.50.
- Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp, Marion Gymnich and Klaus P. Schneider (eds.). 2021. Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World. Cross/Cultures 25. Amsterdam: Brill, 287 pp., € 123.05.
- Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau (eds.). 2021. Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm. London: Routledge, 266 pp., £31.19.
- Lasse R. Gammelgaard, Stefan Iversen, Louise Brix Jacobsen, James Phelan, Richard Walsh, Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen and Simona Zetterberg-Nielsen (eds.). 2022. Fictionality and Literature: Core Concepts Revisited. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 338 pp., 8 illustr., £79.95.
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- New Judgements on the Artistry of Andreas: The Case of Christ III
- The Kassel Fragment from an Early South English Legendary
- “Eene schoone engelsche troupe”: William Durham and His Company of Travelling Performers in Ghent (1713) and Germany (1724–1728)
- Contours of Status and Power: Seats and Sitting Postures in Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend
- Resisting Ireland’s Necropolitics of Asylum: Refugee Voices in Irish Literature and the Arts
- No Country for God: The Brutality of Western Territorial Appropriation in Blood Meridian
- Rachel Seiffert: An Interview with Paula Romo-Mayor
- Reviews
- Michael Lapidge. 2023. Canterbury Glosses from the School of Theodore and Hadrian: The Leiden Glossary. Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 17/1–2, 2 vols. Turnhout: Brepols. 824 pp., 1 illustr., €135,00.
- Review
- Kerstin Majewski. 2022. The Ruthwell Cross and its Texts. A New Reconstruction and an Edition of “The Ruthwell Crucifixion Poem”. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 132. Berlin: de Gruyter, 26 + 397 pp., 39 illustr., €154.95 (hc. and e-book).
- Olga Timofeeva. 2022. Sociolinguistic Variation in Old English: Records of Communities and People. Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 13. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, xv + 204 pp., 29 tables, 14 figures, €99.00 | $149.00.
- Christoph Anton Xaver Hauf. 2021. Verbs of Speaking and the Linguistic Expression of Communication in the History of English. Munich Studies in English 47. Berlin: Lang, 324 pp., 52 figures, 36 tables, €76.70 Hardcover | €77.85 Ebook.
- Rebecca Brackmann. 2023. Old English Scholarship in the Seventeenth Century: Medievalism and National Crisis. Medievalism 23. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, xii + 235 pp., 14 illustr., £70.00 | $105.00 Hardcover, £29.95 | $24.99 Ebook.
- Carolin Harthan. 2022. Medially-Placed Linking Adverbials in Written Academic English: Usage Patterns and Functions. Munich Studies in English 49. Berlin: Lang, 340 pp., 41 figures, 51 tables, €83.20.
- Paul Dawson. 2023. The Story of Fictional Truth: Realism from the Death to the Rise of the Novel. Theory and Interpretation of Narrative. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 246 pp., $ 74.95.
- Olaf Kaltmeier, Mirko Petersen, Wilfried Raussert and Julia Roth (eds.). 2021. Cherishing the Past, Envisioning the Future: Entangled Practices of Heritage and Utopia in the Americas. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 163 pp., 3 illustr., € 23.50.
- Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp, Marion Gymnich and Klaus P. Schneider (eds.). 2021. Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World. Cross/Cultures 25. Amsterdam: Brill, 287 pp., € 123.05.
- Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau (eds.). 2021. Transcending the Postmodern: The Singular Response of Literature to the Transmodern Paradigm. London: Routledge, 266 pp., £31.19.
- Lasse R. Gammelgaard, Stefan Iversen, Louise Brix Jacobsen, James Phelan, Richard Walsh, Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen and Simona Zetterberg-Nielsen (eds.). 2022. Fictionality and Literature: Core Concepts Revisited. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University Press, 338 pp., 8 illustr., £79.95.