Approaches to Teaching the Works of Cormac McCarthy
- Editors: Stacey Peebles, Benjamin West
- Pages: 248
- Published: 2021
- ISBN: 9781603294829 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603294812 (Hardcover)
“Unique . . . will set the standard for future collections.”
—Willard Greenwood, Hiram College
In the decades since his 1992 breakout novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy has gained a reputation as one of the greatest contemporary American authors. Experimenting with genres such as the crime thriller, the post-apocalyptic novel, and the western, his work also engages with the aesthetics of cinema, and several of his novels have been adapted for the screen. While timely and relevant, his works use idiosyncratic language and contain intense, troubling portrayals of racism, sexism, and violence that can pose challenges for students.
This volume offers strategies for guiding students through McCarthy’s oeuvre, addressing all his novels as well as his published plays and screenplays. Part 1, “Materials,” provides sources of biographical information and key scholarship on McCarthy. Essays in part 2, “Approaches,” discuss subjects such as landscape and ecology, mythologies of the American West, film adaptations, and literary contexts and describe assignments that encourage students to write creatively and to examine their personal values.
Acknowledgments (vii)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Works (3)
Translations (4)
Interviews (5)
Biography (6)
Critical Reception (7)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (13)
Historical and Cultural Context
McCarthy and the Question of Violence (21)
“A Strange Equality”: Approaches to Teaching Gender in McCarthy (31)
Multiculturalism, Deep Time, and Judge Holden (41)
Ecocritical Approaches to McCarthy (50)
The City and the Landfill: Teaching Waste, Toxicity, and Southern Environmental History in Suttree (60)
“Freeze This Frame”: McCarthy on Page and Screen (69)
Literary Pairings and Context
Maps and Legends: Teaching McCarthy as a Postsouthern Novelist (80)
Teaching McCarthy’s Western Novels from the Perspective of the Western (92)
McCarthy and the Nineteenth Century: Melville, Dostoevsky, and the Romance Tradition (102)
Teaching The Crossing as the Making of a Mexican Corrido (112)
Cormac McCarthy Made Me Do It: Embodied Responses to Literary Studies (123)
Teaching The Road in the Context of Apocalyptic Studies (132)
Classroom Contexts
Teaching Style Using the Cormac McCarthy Corpus Project: Blood Meridian and The Road (142)
Teaching The Orchard Keeper to High School Students (156)
“Green Hair and Bones in Their Noses”: Teenagers’ Appreciation for No Country for Old Men (163)
Cosmology in Outer Dark (171)
The Road, Consumerism, and Consumption (182)
Ethical Leadership and Historical Reflection: Teaching McCarthy at The Citadel (192)
The Cormac McCarthy Journals: The Single-Author Graduate Course (202)
Notes on Contributors (215)
Survey Participants (219)
Works Cited (221)
“A comprehensive, useful, definitive project.”
—Erik Hage, author of Cormac McCarthy: A Literary Companion and The Melville-Hawthorne Connection
