Dust, Ash, and the Sublime: Tracing Kant's Aesthetics in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and The Road
Graduation Year
2010
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
English
Major Professor
Phillip Sipiora, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Tova Cooper, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Ylce Irizarry, Ph.D.
Keywords
altruism, apocalypse, desert, divinity, ethics
Abstract
My thesis entails an examination into the presence of the sublime in two novels by Cormac McCarthy: his postmodern western The Crossing and his apocalyptic work The Road. I draw on Kant's aesthetic theory of the sublime, specifically focusing on the Dynamical and Mathematical sublime in relation to the settings of these two narratives. For the sake of brevity, I limit my study to nature's and religion's relation to the sublime in these works. Areas of particular interest to me include: a) How/why the characters of each novel appear unaffected by or even resigned to the lack of control or explanation concerning their surroundings and b) Whether the characters' sense of choice is dependent upon the presence of the sublime in their surroundings. At the thesis' conclusion, I suggest further routes for research, such as the potential connection between the aforementioned Kantian notion of human freedom and a burgeoning concept of morality in McCarthy's later novels, and perhaps a link from McCarthy's sublime and otherworldly slant to literary subgenres such as Magical Realism.
Scholar Commons Citation
Gerdts, Ben, "Dust, Ash, and the Sublime: Tracing Kant's Aesthetics in Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and The Road" (2010). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1640
