| Summary: | A curiously distinctive American product, Western is a genre of fiction which has enjoyed considerable popularity in and outside its birth place. Often considered as a prime example of popular culture, the Western nevertheless has withstood the test of time and continues to capture the imagination of both creative artists as well as the readers. The Western characters and tropes are instantly recognizable often owing to their steadfast loyalty to their generic preoccupations. Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian with its specific geographical setting, its historical time frame and its direct allusion to some culture specific myths of the frontier, naturally demands its own rank amidst the canon of the Western. A truly consummate artist as McCarthy, however, does not just stop at simply subscribing to the essential tropes of the Western while writing his novel. What he does instead is alongside evoking the recognizable patterns of the Western, he provides a covert critique or rigorous revision of them which in turn provides his readers with a much more complex albeit rewardingly insightful reading experience. This paper provides a brief anatomy of the basic narrative structures of a Western novel and tries to analyze how McCarthy in Blood Meridianattempts to re-negotiate with them.
|
|---|
