Cormac McCarthy in Context Literature in Context Series

Cormac McCarthy is a writer informed by an intense curiosity. His interests range from the natural world, to philosophy and religion, to history and culture. Cormac McCarthy in Context offers readers the opportunity to understand how various influences inform his rich body of work. The collection explores the relationship McCarthy has with his favourite authors, writers such as Herman Melville, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway. Other contexts are tremendously informative, including the American Romance tradition of the nineteenth century as well as modernity and the modernist literary movement. Influence and context are of absolute importance in understanding McCarthy, who is now being understood as one of the most significant authors of the contemporary period.

Part I. Environments: 1. Life and career Steven Frye; 2. The South Scott Yarbrough; 3. The Southwest Lydia Cooper; 4. The Santa Fe Institute Ciaran Dowd; Part II. Literary Contexts: Sources, Influences, Allusions: 5. William Faulkner Jay Watson; 6. Ernest Hemingway Olivia Carr Edenfield; 7. Herman Melville and the American Romance tradition G. R. Thompson; 8. Romanticism Dustin Anderson; 9. Naturalism Adam H. Wood; 10. The Bible Alan Noble; 11. Allusion and allegory Bill Hardwig; Part III. Intellectual Contexts: 12. The Judeo-Christian tradition James Dorson; 13. Gnosticism Benjamin West; 14. Classical and pre-classical philosophy David Williams; 15. Nineteenth and twentieth-century philosophy Julius Greve; 16. Formal aesthetic choices Bryan Vescio; 17. Science and technology Jay Ellis; Part IV. Social and Cultural Contexts: 18. American politics David Holloway; 19. Race and cultural difference John Dudley; 20. Ecology Susan Kollin; 21. Modernity Nicholas Monk; 22. A visual artist on McCarthy Peter Josyph; 23. Cinematic adaptations Lee Clark Mitchell; 24. Cinematic influences Petra Mundik; Part V. Archives, Critical History, Translation: 25. The archives and the Tennessee years, I: The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark Dianne C. Luce; 26. The archives and the Tennessee years, II: Child of God, The Gardener's Son, and Suttree Dianne C. Luce; 27. The San Marcos archives: Blood Meridian and the West Michael Lynn Crews; 28. Letters and correspondence Katie Salzmann; 29. Critical history Stacey Peebles; 30. Translation and international reception, I Beatrice Trotignon; 31. Translation and international reception, II Beatrice Trotignon.

Steven Frye is Professor of American Literature and Chair of the English Department at California State University, Bakersfield, as well as President of the Cormac McCarthy Society. He has edited five collections and published three books that focus on the writers of the American Romance tradition from the nineteenth century to the present. He is an expert in the literature of the American West, and his edited volume The Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy (Cambridge, 2013) was favorably reviewed by the Times Literary Supplement.