“War Was Always Here”: “Frontier Myth” in C. McCarthy’s Novel “Blood Meridian”

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to identify transformation of the key aspects of the “frontier myth” in Cormac McCarthy’s novel “Blood Meridian”. The article examines the content characteristics of “frontier constellation” as a scientific conception, national myth and artistic image, analyses the author’s reinterpretation of violence and nature role in the frontier epic. Scientific novelty of the work lies in choosing the material that has been little studied in the Russian literary criticism and multi-aspect research perspective that makes it possible to take a deeper look at the author’s vision. As a result, it is proved that in “Blood Meridian”, McCarthy deconstructs the idea of the frontier as an ideological tool that legitimises violence and confirms the American exceptionalism.

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Author information

About this article

Publication history

• Received: April 14, 2021.
• Published: May 31, 2021.

Keywords

• К. Маккарти
• «Кровавый меридиан»
• фронтир
• вестерн
• американское национальное сознание
• C. McCarthy
• “Blood Meridian”
• frontier
• western
• American national consciousness

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© 2021 The Author(s)
© 2021 Gramota Publishing, LLC

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)