Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
12-2013
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Dr. Mark Holland
Committee Members
Dr. Thomas Alan Holmes, Dr. Jesse Graves
Abstract
Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse.
My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the insights of a number of McCarthy scholars. But the work of extra-‐literary scholars—philologists, Jungian psychologists, cultural anthropologists and religious historians whose works explore the origins of human violence and the spiritual impulse—is also invoked to shed light on McCarthy’s evolving perspective.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Kottage, Robert A., "“Between the Dream and Reality”: Divination in the Novels of Cormac McCarthy" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 2310. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/2310
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
Included in
Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, Other Religion Commons