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Seeking Redemption: Complicitous Critique in Border Trilogy of Cormac McCarthy
ZHU Fei-fei
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2023.08.002
Huazhong University of Science and Technology; Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
Cormac McCarthy, the veteran American writer, is often questioned as being obsessed with darkness and nihility because of the lack of definite redemption in his works. However, if “Border trilogy”, the representative work of his western novels, is put under the framework of postmodern poetics proposed by Linda Hutcheon, it will be found that redemption is hidden in the narrative structure. And the author structures the narration by dual coding strategies, such as parody, paradoxical irony and metafiction to make works conspire with the history and realty while criticize it at the same time. It is the complicitous critique. This symbiotic contradiction makes some accepted ideas problematic and urges the reader to seek justice and redemption in the tension of paradox. Therefore, redemption is coming in seeking.
Cormac McCarthy, complicitous critique, narrative redemption, paradoxical irony
Journal of Literature and Art Studies, August 2023, Vol. 13, No. 8, 563-572
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