From June 14-17, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute will host a conference exploring Cormac McCarthy’s work using a variety of perspectives, with a special focus on his engagement with Irish culture and literature.
Cormac McCarthy has been a towering presence in American fiction for over 50 years, internationally acclaimed for a body of work that includes No Country for Old Men and The Road, both of which became major films.
“While it may not be immediately evident on reading his fiction, Cormac McCarthy has strong connections to Ireland and Irish literature, connections that inform his approach to writing, and that can be seen as central to his depiction of the American Southwest”, says Dr. Dara Downey from the Trinity School of English.
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The event’s plenary address, titled “Babycinos at the End of the World: Parenthood and Cormac McCarthy”, will be delivered by Dr. Kevin Power, a novelist and American literature specialist from the School of English, Trinity College Dublin.
"Cormac McCarthy is one of the writers who has shaped the latter-day American imagination. This conference offers a unique opportunity to reflect on his significance, not just to American literature, but to 20th and 21st-century culture more generally," says Dr. Power.
Topics to be discussed during the conference include “McCarthy, Catholicism, and the American Gothic”; “The Power of the Dead in the Works of Cormac McCarthy and Seamus Heaney”, “Hunger: McCarthy, Land Use, and Ethical Consumption in the Face of Biodisaster”; and Gothic Longing in Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark and James Joyce's 'The Dead’”.
“Cormac McCarthy is a consummate aesthetic alchemist, combining the raw material of human experience, identifiable history, and philosophy, in works that will inspire readers and scholars for generations to come,” says Steven Frye, one of the conference organizers and President of the Cormac McCarthy Society.
For more information visit the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute website here.
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