from Part IV - Social and Cultural Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 December 2019
This chapter contextualizes McCarthy’s fiction and drama in main currents of North American politics since the 1960s. The chapter outlines a set of assumptions about how political meaning and value are generated in literature, with a particular emphasis on the need to historicize the relationship between the political and the literary. The argument is grounded in the assumption that as subjects or citizens, and as consumers of language who are themselves historically produced, it is readers, not writers, who establish the parameters in which literature becomes “political.” Reading his prose through the prism of twenty-first century culture wars, the chapter suggests that McCarthy’s writing can be read as either liberal or conservative, or as both simultaneously, depending on the politics that readers themselves bring with them to the act of reading the work.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.