About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBloomsbury Publishing

ISBN-10150133073X

ISBN-139781501330735

eBay Product ID (ePID)28038382224

Product Key Features

Number of Pages232 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameCormac Mccarthy and the Signs of Sacrament : Literature, Theology, and the Moral of Stories

Publication Year2017

SubjectSubjects & Themes / Religion, American / General, Christianity / Literature & the Arts, Subjects & Themes / General

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Religion

AuthorMatthew L. Potts

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.6 in

Item Weight16.3 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width5.9 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

Reviews"It might seem, at first glance, willfully counterintuitive to scour McCarthy's resolutely horrific fiction for signs of grace. Yet this is precisely what makes McCarthy such a rewarding case study for a literature of sacrament ... This book warrants careful reading and critical attention. Given the various ways Potts is alive to the subtleties of Christian theology--especially to the semiotics of sacrament--and given how dexterously he transposes that thought into the space of literature, this book will surely be of value in ongoing debates about the postsecularism of American letters. Moreover, the book's value within the more specialist discourse of McCarthy criticism will be doubly pronounced. While Potts delivers new and significantly revised readings of well-known moments within McCarthy's canon, the polemical edge given to some of his claims is certainly justified. Inattention to sacrament is 'regrettable,' we are told, because it 'impoverishes interpretation' (1). The truth of this claim is born out in its antipode: a newfound knowledge of the sacrament, made perfectly legible here, will certainly enrich our reading." - Modern Fiction Studies, It might seem, at first glance, willfully counterintuitive to scour McCarthy's resolutely horrific fiction for signs of grace. Yet this is precisely what makes McCarthy such a rewarding case study for a literature of sacrament ... This book warrants careful reading and critical attention. Given the various ways Potts is alive to the subtleties of Christian theology--especially to the semiotics of sacrament--and given how dexterously he transposes that thought into the space of literature, this book will surely be of value in ongoing debates about the postsecularism of American letters. Moreover, the book's value within the more specialist discourse of McCarthy criticism will be doubly pronounced. While Potts delivers new and significantly revised readings of well-known moments within McCarthy's canon, the polemical edge given to some of his claims is certainly justified. Inattention to sacrament is 'regrettable,' we are told, because it 'impoverishes interpretation' (1). The truth of this claim is born out in its antipode: a newfound knowledge of the sacrament, made perfectly legible here, will certainly enrich our reading., Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament is and will for a long time remain the best treatment we have of McCarthy as proto-postmodern theologian. Matthew Potts' readings recuperate the category of 'story' for postmodernity.

Dewey Edition23

Dewey Decimal813/.54

Table Of ContentAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Knowledge 2. Fate 3. Action 4. Story 5. Sacrament Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

SynopsisAlthough scholars have widely acknowledged the prevalence of religious reference in the work of Cormac McCarthy, this is the first book on the most pervasive religious trope in all his works: the image of sacrament, and in particular, of eucharist. Informed by postmodern theories of narrative and Christian theologies of sacrament, Matthew Potts reads the major novels of Cormac McCarthy in a new and insightful way, arguing that their dark moral significance coheres with the Christian theological tradition in difficult, demanding ways. Potts develops this account through an argument that integrates McCarthy's fiction with both postmodern theory and contemporary fundamental and sacramental theology. In McCarthy's novels, the human self is always dispossessed of itself, given over to harm, fate, and narrative. But this fundamental dispossession, this vulnerability to violence and signs, is also one uniquely expressed in and articulated by the Christian sacramental tradition. By reading McCarthy and this theology alongside postmodern accounts of action, identity, subjectivity, and narration, Potts demonstrates how McCarthy exploits Christian theology in order to locate the value of human acts and relations in a way that mimics the dispossessing movement of sacramental signs. This is not to claim McCarthy for theology, necessarily, but it is to assert that McCarthy generates his account of what human goodness might look like in the wake of metaphysical collapse through the explicit use of Christian theology.

LC Classification NumberPS3563.C337Z83 2017