Divination is a trope Cormac McCarthy employs time and again in his work. Augury, haruspicy, cartomancy, voodoo, sortition and oneiromancy all take their places in the texts, overtly or otherwise, as well as divination by bloodshed (a practice so ubiquitous as to have no formal name). But mantic practices which aim at an understanding of the divine mind prove problematic in a universe that often appears godless—or worse. My thesis uses divination as the starting point for a close reading of each of McCarthy’s novels. Research into Babylonian, Greek, Roman and African soothsaying practices is included, as well as the insights of a number of McCarthy scholars. But the work of extra-­‐literary scholars—philologists, Jungian psychologists, cultural anthropologists and religious historians whose works explore the origins of human violence and the spiritual impulse—is also invoked to shed light on McCarthy’s evolving perspective.

While McCarthy studies have emphasized elements of the sacred in his writing, this thesis adds a new historical perspective and synthesis to reading paradigms of Cormac McCarthy. The Crossing combines the patterns of the ancient pre-Hebraic genre of the desert sublime with the basic formula of the American Western genre to interrogate McCarthy's question of whether in the postmodern moment one can still divest oneself in the desert and find access to the sublime. In an era of an invisible or absent God where post-humanist thought erases the anthropocentric supremacy of human over animal and the earth itself, the one constant in the desert sublime genre is the physical reality of the desert itself. Thus, McCarthy's recourse is to infuse the desert sublime with contemporary ecological thought. In the desert Billy Parham encounters other desert dwellers who share with him shards and traces of belief while Billy also learns bodily from the material experience of his physical sojourn. Billy is a nascent postmodern saint whose journeys into the desert reveal to him the ecotheological principle of the interconnectedness of all things as a natural physical law that undergirds the spiritual truth guiding ethical behavior. Billy arrives at a point of radical transformation that teaches him the necessity of choosing compassion, affiliation, simple service, and humility in a world of interconnected beings and living forms.

Cormac McCarthy's representation of the comic theories of the carnivalesque, incongruity, and absurdism by the antagonists of Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men demonstrates the unique and ostensible power of humor over (or at least, its awareness of and reconciliation to the absurdity of) death; it also emphasizes the supreme power and influence of humor as a means for destroying other institutions and philosophies which claim knowledge or authority but fail to sustain individuals in times of crisis. This makes humor a formidable factor in determining and justifying the outcome of human interactions and in defining the strengths and limitations of McCarthy's antagonists.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a legal history and analysis of how the treason clause has been utilized since the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1789. Further, the United States and the United Kingdom share not only a historical parallel of the meaning and use of the charge of treason, but also an abandonment of using the charge today. This thesis will provide an in-depth legal history of treason charges in the United States, along with its close parallels in historical evolution and usage to that of the United Kingdom. Focusing prominently on treason throughout United States history, this project will analyze several of the famous treason trials in the nineteenth century, namely the federal prosecution of Aaron Burr in 1807, and the Commonwealth of Virginia's prosecution of John Brown for treason against a state government in 1859. This thesis will also examine the last person prosecuted for treason in the United States: Tomoya Kawakita in 1952. In addition, as a contribution to the "legal history" genre, this paper will summarize the last use of the treason offense in Great Britain in 1946, for which Nazi propaganda broadcaster William Joyce was tried and executed. The core of this thesis will be an analysis of treason law in the United States and also the United Kingdom, with a particular emphasis on why this charge was abandoned by both countries after the early 1950s, and why it should be re-instituted in the twenty-first century. The premise of this thesis will demonstrate a prominent factor in the 1950s leading to the discontinuation of the usage of the treason clause was the negative cultural impact of the era of McCarthyism, and the political misusage of the treason label for his political purposes.

This dissertation engages a number of currents of environmental criticism and rhetoric in an analysis of the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction of the southeastern United States. I examine conceptions of genitive relationships with the environment as portrayed in the work of diverse writers, primarily William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Southern literature is rarely addressed in ecocritical studies, and to date no work offers an intensive and focused examination of the rhetoric employed in conceptions of environmental ownership. However, southern literature and culture provides fertile ground to trace the creation, development, and communication of environmental values because of its history of agrarianism, slavery, and a literary tradition committed to a sense of place. I argue that the concerns of the two main distinctive threads of environmental literary scholarship - ecopoetics and environmentalism of the poor - neatly overlap in the literature of the South. I employ rhetorical theory and phenomenology to argue that southern authors call into question traditional forms of writing about nature - such as pastoral, the sublime, and wilderness narratives - to reinvent and revitalize those forms in order to develop and communicate modes of reciprocal ownership of natural and cultural environments. These writers not only imagine models of personal and communal coexistence with the environment, but also provide new ways of thinking about environmental justice. The intersection of individual and social relationships with history and nature in Southern literature provides new models for thinking about environmental relationships and how they are communicated. I argue that expressions of environmental ownership and belonging suggest how individuals and groups can better understand their distance and proximity to their environments, which may result in new valuations of personal and social environmental relationships.

Magister Artium - MA / Through a literary analysis of two contemporary novels, J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), in which a common concern seems to be an exploration of what it means to be human, the thesis seeks to explore the relationship between human consciousness and language. This dissertation considers the development of a conception of the human based on rationality, and which begins in the Italian Renaissance and gains momentum in the Enlightenment. This conception models the human as a stable knowable self. This is drawn in contrast to the novels, which figure the absence of a stable knowable self in the representation of their protagonists. The thesis thus interrogates language's capacity to provide definitional meanings of the ''human.'' On the other hand, although language's capacity to provide essential meanings is questioned, its abundant expressive forms give voice to the experience of human being. Drawing on a range of fields of enquiry, both philosophical, linguistic, and bio-ethical, this thesis seeks to explore the connection between human consciousness and the medium of language. It considers how the two novels in question play with the concept of language to produce or imagine other ways of thinking about human existence, and other ways of creating meaning to human existence through the representation of their novels.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to compare the protagonists of two novels which are classified as Southern gothic writings: Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, and The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole. Although the pivotal characters appear dissimilar, the comparison and analysis of the novels might demonstrate common features and motifs. Studying of Southern gothic phenomena constitutes a background for the analysis, and also the initial part of the thesis. It is focused on a basic characteristic of the genre on the basis of the development of Southern literature. There is an introduction of the most important authors, genres, and typical motifs. The analytical part is prefaced by a reference to the life and work of the writers, as their nature and literary production vary. There is more attention paid to the texts by McCarthy because he has published a larger quantity of books in comparison with Toole. Southern gothic elements are therefore observed and compared in the analysed short novels, and also in other McCarthy's texts. The comparison corresponds to the theoretical ground.

NUNES, Francisco Romário. The Road: o tema da violência da escrita para as telas. 2015. 150f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras, Fortaleza (CE), 2015. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2015-06-05T17:30:27Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_dis_frnunes.pdf: 1763515 bytes, checksum: 26e4f72fd2473493106e1461b45eba59 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2015-06-08T12:54:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_dis_frnunes.pdf: 1763515 bytes, checksum: 26e4f72fd2473493106e1461b45eba59 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-08T12:54:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2015_dis_frnunes.pdf: 1763515 bytes, checksum: 26e4f72fd2473493106e1461b45eba59 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / This paper analyzes the translation of the book The Road (2006), by Cormac McCarthy, to cinema, focusing on the theme of violence and the way it was translated to film. The Road tells the story of a father and his son; both are survivors of a disaster on Earth. They walk towards the south coast of the United States. During this journey, the characters remake the American History, a country that obtained its territorial expansion from north to south. Nevertheless, there is nothing to be conquered because the West lives post-apocalyptic days. On this regard, the characters wander among corpses seeking protection from the groups that practice cannibalism. Having this plot, the novel achieved popularity in its home country, as well as it obtained academic prestige, which culminated with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Three years after its release, The Road was adapted to a film with the same tittle, directed by John Hillcoat. Our main aim, then, is to investigate which strategies the director used to translate the theme of violence in cinema. We assume that the film translated violence according to the patterns of Hollywood melodrama, through a narrative construction that intends to make the spectator have affection for the characters. For this purpose, we based our research on some authors of Translation Studies: Lefevere (1992), Toury (1995) and Even-Zohar (1990). Thereafter, we studied some theories concerning adaptation from literature to screen according to Cattrysse (1992), Stam (2008) and Hutcheon (2013). Related to cinema theory, we studied Machado (2011), Xavier (2003, 2012) and Bordwell (1985). We also investigated the depiction of violence in literature and in the film, according to the authors Leenhardt (1990), Lins (1990), Ginzburg (2012), Abel (2007), Hikiji (2012) and Mongin (1999). Finally, we discussed some critical essays on McCarthy, pointing out Cant (2009), Ellis (2006), Walsh (2009), and Hage (2010), among others. The results showed that the adaptation translated violence in a way it reinforced the melodrama, highlighting the characters’ hazardous condition in both the time and the space of this narrative film, and incorporating narrative strategies which could make the spectator identify with the father and his son. / Este trabalho analisa a tradução da obra The Road (2006), de Cormac McCarthy, para o cinema, com foco na temática da violência e a forma como foi traduzida na narrativa fílmica. The Road narra a história de um pai e seu filho, ambos sobreviventes de uma catástrofe ocorrida na terra. Juntos caminham em direção à costa sul dos Estados Unidos. Durante a jornada, os personagens reescrevem a História americana, país que obteve sua expansão territorial do norte para o sul. No entanto, não há nada para conquistar, pois o Oeste vive dias pós-apocalípticos. Dessa forma, os personagens vagueiam entre cadáveres e buscam protegerse de grupos que praticam canibalismo. O romance, com esse enredo, alcançou popularidade no seu país de origem, assim como obteve prestígio da academia, que culminou com o prêmio Pulitzer de ficção. Três anos depois de seu lançamento, The Road foi adaptado para o cinema com o título homônimo, dirigido por John Hillcoat. Nosso principal objetivo, portanto, é investigar quais as estratégias usadas pelo diretor para traduzir o tema da violência no cinema. Partimos da hipótese de que o filme traduziu a violência, seguindo parâmetros do melodrama hollywoodiano, por meio de uma construção narrativa que busca fazer com que o espectador crie identificação com os personagens. Para tal, recorremos à leitura das obras dos seguintes teóricos dos Estudos da Tradução: Lefevere (1992), Toury (1995) e Even-Zohar (1990). Por conseguinte, realizamos a leitura de teóricos que discutem a respeito de adaptações literárias para o cinema como: Cattrysse (1992), Stam (2008) e Hutcheon (2013). Embasamonos ainda nos críticos de cinema: Machado (2011), Xavier (2003, 2012) e Bordwell (1985). Sobre a representação da violência na literatura e no cinema, optamos por Leenhardt (1990), Lins (1990), Ginzburg (2012), Abel (2007), Hikiji (2012), e Mongin (1999). Por fim, acerca da fortuna crítica de McCarthy, destacamos Cant (2009), Ellis (2006), Walsh (2009) e Hage (2010), entre outros. Os resultados mostraram que a adaptação fílmica traduziu a violência de modo que ela acentuasse o melodrama, reforçando a condição precária dos personagens no tempo-espaço da narrativa e incorporando estratégias narrativas que reproduzissem no espectador certa identificação com os personagens pai e filho.

The present thesis deals with a possible approach to the literary text in the teaching of literature in secondary school. It discusses the choice of the literary text, its reading, interpretation and meaning. The whole approach is demonstrated on Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road; the theoretical framework of the thesis is provided by Přemysl Blažíček's texts. The thesis aims to figure out whether Blažíček's literary thought is as viable and useful in the pedagogical process as it is in literary criticism and theory.

This thesis examines the precode horror comic books of the 1950's as an original American art form and as a popular medium in postwar America.