Cormac McCarthys Borders and Landscapes

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Cormac McCarthys work is attracting an increasing number of scholars and critics from a range of disciplines within the humanities and beyond, from political philosophy to linguistics and from musicology to various branches of the sciences. Cormac McCarthys Borders and Landscapes contributes to this developing field of research, investigating the way McCarthys writings speak to other works within the broader fields of American literature, international literature, border literature, and other forms of comparative literature. It also explores McCarthys literary antecedents and the movements out of which his work has emerged, such as modernism, romanticism, naturalism, eco-criticism, genre-based literature (western, southern gothic), folkloric traditions and mythology.

Reviews

Lou Jillett has drawn together a collection of essays by both established and up-and-coming McCarthy scholars that covers the full range of the author's career, but which also focuses on ecocritical and bioregional approaches to the author's work. Much of the previous scholarship in that area has focuses on The Road, as Jillett notes in her preface, but clearly inquiries in to topics like frontier violence, nomadism, and borders or liminal thresholds (as three of the five sections of the collection are titled) are both contemporarily relevant and applicable to all of McCarthy's work. And in a nod to the collection's origins, comparisons with the Australian authors Patrick White and Tim Winton are also included. Jillett has curated an excellent addition to McCarthy studies, and anyone who wants to know what Cormackians are talking about these days would do well to seek it out. * Stacey Peebles, Associate Professor of English and Director of Film Studies, Centre College, USA, and editor of The Cormac McCarthy Journal *
Cormac McCarthys Borders and Landscapes is a rich and contemporary collection that explores the full range of McCarthys works, from his early southern novels to his later work, much of it situated in the American West. Interpreting the idea of 'border' broadly, these essays explore both interior and exterior borders in the context of philosophy, psychology, and literary theory, with a particular focus on ecocriticism and bioregionalism. Various chapters take on with vigor and incisive vision McCarthys persistent exploration of violence and its human and ecological consequences. The volume is comparative in approach, with careful attention paid to the authors evolution in perspective and his increasingly global vision. The volume is an essential addition to a rich body of criticism, and it makes a tremendous contribution to our understanding of one of the most important authors of our time. * Steven Frye, Professor of English, California State University, Bakersfield, USA, author of Understanding Cormac McCarthy, and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy and The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American West *
This new collection of essays on Cormac McCarthy beautifully captures the topology of his prose: its rootedness to particular places and non-places, but also its metaphysical stoniness. Always lively and varied, the book truly internationalises McCarthy, opening his work up to new borders and vistas. * Chris Danta, Senior Lecturer in English, University of New South Wales, Australia *
The scholarly breadth, theoretical rigour and interdisciplinarity of this collection place it at the leading edge of McCarthy criticism. Cormac McCarthys Borders and Landscapes offers a range of original critical perspectives on this most fascinating of writers, providing an invaluable guide for readers who wish to explore fresh ways of reading McCarthys work through the prism of exciting new departures in literary criticism. * David Holloway, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, University of Derby, UK *
A major event in McCarthy studies Jilletts edited book deserves high praise [It] opens up an as yet understudied field of research within McCarthy scholarship A much-needed book that conjoins the ecocritical and the media-theoretical perspectives within the transnational community of McCarthy scholars An indispensable guide for those interested in the latest developments of McCarthy studies. * The Cormac McCarthy Journal *

Author Bio

Louise Jillettis a tutor in the School of Humanities & Communication Arts and a PhD Candidate at the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University, Australia.