A Bloody and Barbarous God : The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy

__A Bloody and Barbarous God__ investigates the relationship between gnosticism, a system of thought that argues that the cosmos is evil and that the human spirit must strive for liberation from manifest existence, and the perennial philosophy, a study of the highest common factor in all esoteric religions, and how these traditions have influenced the later novels of Cormac McCarthy, namely, __Blood Meridian__, __All the Pretty Horses__, __The Crossing__, __Cities of the Plain__, __No Country for Old Men__, and __The Road__. Mundik argues that McCarthy continually strives to evolve an explanatory theodicy throughout his work and that his novels are, to a lesser or greater extent, concerned with the meaning of human existence in relation to the presence of evil and the nature of the divine. This book looks at the esoteric philosophical influences on six of Cormac McCarthy's novels. The author offers a fresh approach, investigating the relationship between Gnosticism, a system of thought that sees the cosmos as evil and holds that the human spirit must strive for liberation, and the Perennial Philosophy, a study of the common factor in all esoteric religions. She examines the ways these two traditions have influenced McCarthy's later novels. Mundik discusses six books: Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain, No Country for Old Men, and The Road, with a particular focus on Blood Meridian and The Crossing, a novel that has received less critical attention than the others. She argues that in all McCarthy's novels the author strives to evolve an explanation for the nature of God and that all the novels are concerned with the meaning of human existence in relation to good and evil. Blood Meridian is the subject of the first four chapters. The author examines the spiritual traditions embodied in the landscape and the characters and shows how the novel departs from traditional spirituality and moves toward rationalism, materialism, reductionism, and nihilism. Subsequent chapters look at the theology and philosophy of the other novels and trace McCarthy's preoccupations with fate and evil. In some of the novels she sees suggestions of the power of hope and redemption. Any reader of McCarthy's fiction will find her analyses accessible and useful. -- from dust jacket Front Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Introduction: “A Direct Apprehension of Reality”: Cormac McCarthy and the Perennial Philosophy 1: “Terra Damnata”: The Anticosmic Mysticism of Blood Meridian 2: “Suzerain of the Earth”: Unravelling the Mystery of the Judge in Blood Meridian 3: “Disciples of a New Faith”: Satanic Parody in Blood Meridian 4: “ This Luminosity in Beings So Endarkened”: Gnostic Soteriology in Blood Meridian 5: “Diverging Equity”: The Nature of Existence in All the Pretty Horses 6: “All Was Fear and Marvel”: Positive and Negative Epiphanies in The Crossing, Book 1 7: “The Illusion of Proximity”: Transcendence and Immanence in The Crossing, Book 2 8: “Mourners in the Darkness”: Blindness and Insight in The Crossing, Book 3 9: “The Right and Godmade Sun”: Destiny and Salvation in The Crossing, Book 4 10: “Beauty and Loss Are One”: Transience and Fate in Cities of the Plain 11: “The Bloody and Barbarous God”: Sin and Forgiveness in Cities of the Plain 12: “That Man Who Is All Men”: The Illusory and the Real in the Epilogue to the Border Trilogy 13: “ In All That Dark and All That Cold”: Good and Evil in No Country for Old Men 14: “All Things of Grace and Beauty”: The Presence of the Sacred in The Road Notes Works Cited Index Back Cover