DOI: 10.5176/2251-3566_L314.41
Authors: Dylan Black
Abstract: Many critics view Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" (1985) as a universal revelation of the nature of violence. Some critics over-read the novel's universality, however, contending that history is only a secondary concern for McCarthy, or else not important at all. While far more than simply an historical romance of the American South-West, the novel is very much rooted in an historical approach that appears to have three main aspects: (1) to reveal the terrible violence at the heart of American Manifest Destiny and the Jacksonian Impulse; (2) to relate the precepts and events of Manifest Destiny to wars just preceding or concurrent to the novel's date of publication, namely the Cold War adventures in Vietnam and Central America, and (3) in an expansion of the term "Western," to reveal the fundamental bankruptcy of the entire Enlightenment project of Western civilization.
Keywords: Cormac McCarthy, American West, American Frontier, Manifest Destiny, historical romance, historical novel
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