Cormac McCarthy’nin Blood Meridian Adlı Eserinde Grotesk Öğeler ve Güney Gotik

Öz

Bu makale Amerikalı yazar Cormac McCarthy’nin Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West adlı romaninda post-southern okuma yaklaşımıyla the Judge karakteriyle somutlaştırılan Amerikanin Güney eyaletlerinde etkisini sürdüren tarihi travmatik olayların sorunsallaştırılmasını ve eleştirilmesini  amaçlamaktadır. Okuyucuya ahlaki bir pusula sunabilmek için, metin iyi-kötü dikotomisini ve insan oğlunun tuhaf ve grotesk dünyasını ‘the kid’ ve ‘the judge’ karakterleri aracılığıyla sunmaktadır. Bu dikotomi aracılığıyla, okuyucu baskın güç ve söylemlerin bakış açısından ve kontrolünden kaçan olası alternatifanlatımların ve hikayelerin varlığını kabul etmektedir. Karşıt anlatımlar her tür boyun eğdirmeyi ve efsaneleştirilmiş tarihi sorunsallaştırmakta ve baskın gücün ezilmişler üzerinde sürdürmeye çalıştığı şiddeti reddetmektedir. Bu bağlamda iyi ile kötü arasındaki mücadele ve kötünün sergilemiş olduğu çılgınlık seviyesi Bakhtin ve Thomson’un ileri sürdüğü grotesk ögeler, abartı, mübağala ve aşırılık, ışığında iredelenmesi  amaçlanmaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Gotik,grotesk,şiddet,geçmiş,anı

Grotesque and Southern Gothic in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian

Öz

This article offers a post-southernist reading that challenges and problematizes the impacts of haunted past of the American South with implications of violence embodied by Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West. In order to present a moral compass to the reader, the text presents good-evil dichotomy and the world of human through the uncanny and grotesque characters of “the kid” and “the judge.” Through this dichotomy, the reader acknowledges the possibility of alternative narratives that escape from the control and totalizing gaze of dominant power and discourses. The counter- narratives complicate any types of subjugation, mythologized history, and refuse to approve the violence that the prevailing power practices against innocent people. This paper aims to analyze the struggle between the good and evil and the degree of insanity performed by the evil depicted through southern gothic and grotesque scenes. Thus, the paper contributes to grotesque reading of the selected text through a number of elements: “exaggeration, hyperbolism, and excessiveness,” generally considered fundamental attributes of the grotesque style (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 303).

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Gothic,grotesque,violence,past,memory

Kaynakça

1. Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
2. Bell, V. M. (1988). The metaphysics of violence: Blood Meridian. In The achievement of Cormac McCarthy (p. 116-135). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
3. Bloom, H. (2001). Introduction to: Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Modern Library Edition.
4. Brewton, V. (2004). The changing landscape of violence in Cormac McCarthy’s early novels and the border trilogy. The Southern Literary Journal (37)1, 121-143.
5. Broncano, M. (2005). Cormac McCarthy’s grotesque allegory in Blood Meridian. Journal of English Studies 5-6, 31-46.
6. Campbell, N. (2000). Liberty beyond its proper bounds: Cormac McCarthy’s history of the West in Blood Meridian. In R. Wallach (Ed.), Myth, legend, dust: Critical responses to Cormac McCarthy (pp. 217-226). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
7. Castillo, S. S., & Crow, C. L. (Eds.). (2016). Introduction. Palgrave handbook of the southern gothic. Palgrave Macmillan.
8. Crow, C. L. (2013). A companion to American gothic. Charles L. Crow (Ed.). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

9. Daugherty, L. (1993). Gravers false and true: Blood Meridian as gnostic tragedy. In E. T. Arnold & D. C. Luce (Eds.), Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy (pp. 157-17). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
10. Douglass, H. (2002). Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. In H. Bloom (Ed.), Cormac McCarthy (pp. 37-56). Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.
11. Ellis, J. (2006). Sins of the father, sins of the son. In No place for home: Spatial constraint and character flight in the novels of Cormac McCarthy (pp. 113-168). New York: Routledge.
12. Ellis, J. (2013). The Road beyond zombies of the new south. In J. Ellis (Ed.), Critical insights: southern gothic literature, (p. 50).
13. Fiedler, L. A. (1960). Love and death in the American novel. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2003.
14. Fisher, B. F. (2008). Southern gothic. In M. T. Inge (Ed.), The new encyclopedia of southern culture (Vol. 9: Literature) (p. 145). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
15. Hungerford, A. (2010). Postmodern belief: American literature and religion since 1960. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
16. Lincoln, K. (2009). Go bloody west: Blood Meridian. In American literature readings in the 21st century (pp. 79-91). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
17. Marshall, B. M. (2013). Defining southern gothic. In J. Ellis (Ed.), Critical insights: Southern gothic literature, p. 13.
18. Masters, J. J. (1998). Witness to the uttermost edge of the world: Judge Holden’s textual enterprise in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 40(1), 25-37.
19. Mc Elroy, B. (1989). Fiction of modern grotesque. London: The MacMillan Press.
20. McCarthy, C. (1985). The Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West. New York: Vintage International. Morledge, P. J. (2008). Southern gothic shorts. PJM Publishing Sheffield, England.
21. Nelson, L. J. (2004). Night thoughts on the gothic novel. In F. Botting & D. Townshend (Eds.), Gothic: Critical concepts in literary and cultural studies. New York: Routledge.
22. O’Connor, F. (2000). The fiction writer and his country. In Sally & R. Fitzgerald (Eds.), Mystery and manners: Occasional prose (p. 28). New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
23. Phillip, T. (1972). The grotesque: The critical idiom. New York: Routledge.
24. Phillips, D. (2002). History and ugly facts of Blood Meridian. In J. D. Lilley (Ed.), Cormac McCarthy new directions (pp. 17-47), Albuquerque: New Mexico Press.
25. Shaviro, S. (1993). The very life of the darkness: A reading of Blood Meridian. In E. T. Arnold & C. L. Dianne (Eds.), Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy (pp. 143-157). Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
26. Vieth, R. (2010). A frontier myth turns gothic: "Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West". The Cormac McCarthy Journal, 8(1), 55-72. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/42909410.