【一】:research proposal范文
Research proposal
1. Title：
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and American Modern Eschatology
Or Modern Eschatology of the 21st century America in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
2. Introduction：
1).about the author:
a. Most Important achievements about Cormac McCarthy:
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright, who was once described as “the best unknown novelist in America”. So far McCarthy has written ten novels, one published five-act play, and one filmed screenplay, among which, novels are considered his most conspicuous literary achievements.
On May 5th, 2009, Cormac McCarthy has won the biennial PEN/Saul Bellow award for lifetime achievement in American literature, for "a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which places him or her in the highest rank of American literature".
He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book Award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses.
His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner.
b. His Life:
Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island on July 20, 1933. Cormac was raised Roman Catholic. He attended Catholic High School in Knoxville, and then went to the University of Tennessee in 1951-52. He majored in Liberal arts. His college experience could be considered a rewarding one with his debut publications :A Drowning Incident and Wake for Susan in the student literary magazine, The Phoenix, which won him the “Ingram-Merrill Award for Creative Writing” respectively in 1959 and 1960. McCarthy joined the U.S. Air Force in 1953; he served four years, spending two of them stationed in Alaska, where he hosted a radio show.
Gradually his literary potential came into emergence and in 1960 he began to pursue his writing career in a small American town in Texas along the America-Mexico border.
c.
His Novels:
Many of McCarthy’s works are said to be based on his own experiences or actual events.
The Orchard Keeper (1965) and Outer Dark (1968) were completed after his trips to Europe. His first book The Orchard Keep (1965) was recognized with the William Faulkner Award. In the next year he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant. In 1969, his second novel Outer Dark won him Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Writing. Child of God was inspired by things that really happened in Sevier County, which garnered mixed reviews; some praised it as great, while others found it despicable. In 1979, McCarthy published Suttree, a book considered by some critics to be McCarthy’s best work to date. His fourth novel Suttree won him MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1979. The above four novels are called Appalachian novels.
Then McCarthy moved from Knoxville, Tennessee to El Paso, Texas, hence the shift of the geographical settings of his later novels. His fifth novel Blood Meridian (1986) caught the attention of the mainstream. But McCarthy didn’t finally receive widespread recognition until in 1992 with the publication of All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award and was followed by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, forming the so-called The Border Trilogy, as the events in the novels invariably happen round the American-Mexico Border. McCarthy's next book, 2005's No Country for Old Men, stayed with the western setting and themes yet moved to a more contemporary period. McCarthy's latest book, The Road, was published in 2006 and won international acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize for literature.
d. His views on Writing:
In one of his few interviews (with The New York Times), McCarthy is described as a "gregarious loner" and reveals that he is not a fan of authors who do not "deal with issues of life and death," citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples. "I don't understand them," he said. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange.” McCarthy remains active in the academic community of Santa Fe and spends much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute, which was founded by his friend, physicist Murray Gell-Mann. On June 5, 2007, in McCarthy’s only TV interview invited by Talk show host Oprah Winfrey; McCarthy told Winfrey that he does not know any writers and much prefers the company of scientists. e. Writing features:
McCarthy’s works focus on the life experiences and human feelings of the common people in the south and the west of America. These touching epics are full of cruel violence, nightmarish murders as well as the beautiful eclogue and the gentle requiem. They are admittedly called “symphony of hell and heavy”.
The wilderness is a repeating image in his works. As a fan of outdoor life, McCarthy put most of his stories in Tennessee and Mexico. The tall timber, darkly fierce plots, simple but powerful language are the main features of his works.
McCarthy’s works are also enriched with an imaginative power. Nature, as the greatest being in his works, watches every human deeds, whether stupid, evil, cruel, or good, honest, virtuous.
The climax of the plots is often accompanied with signs from God, which categorizes his some works into post-apocalyptic genres.
2) The Road
According to the PEN, McCarthy is “a distinguished American writer whose critically acclaimed work helped readers understand the human condition in original and powerful ways”. As the climax of McCarthy’s writing career, The Road received so many encomium and awards.
The Road is a post-apocalyptic tale of a journey taken by a father and his young son across a landscape blasted by an unnamed cataclysm that destroyed all civilization and, apparently, most life on earth.
McCarthy's inspiration for The Road came during a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas, with his young son. Imagining what the city might look like in the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son. He took some initial notes but did not return to the idea until a few years later, while in Ireland. Then, the novel came to him quickly, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.
The Road follows a man and a boy, father and son, journeying together towards the sea for many months across a post-apocalyptic landscape, some years after a great, unexplained cataclysm. The boy's mother has committed suicide as an escape from the harsh landscape. The man, himself, has a pistol with two bullets meant for suicide. Civilization has been destroyed, and most species have become extinct. The sun is obscured by dark clouds, and the climate has been altered radically with cold "hard enough to crack stones." Plants do not grow. As the two travel across the landscape, they encounter horrific scenes that show the state of humanity. The scenes include an army of roving cannibals and their catamites and slaves; an infant roasting on a spit; and a basement where slaves, whose limbs are being harvested slowly for food, are kept, groaning and in terrible pain. As the journey progresses, the father begins to cough up blood and he knows that he is going to die, but he holds on only due to his love for the boy. Finally, after the two reach the sea, the man dies, and the boy goes on without him. The boy soon encounters a family of people who take him in and take care of him.www.fz173.com_产业经济researchproposal。
The sight of the end of the human world is finely depicted by McCarthy, which reveals the writer’s concern on the human future and becomes the post-911 fable.
The book, McCarthy's 10th, has been hailed by critics as a masterpiece but it has also achieved commercial success, having been featured by Oprah Winfrey's television book club. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey chose The Road as the April 2007 selection for her Book Club. The sales reached up to 10 million copies in a month.
A film based on the novel was announced to be in development on April 2, 2007. John Hillcoat is set to direct and the adaptation will be handled by Joe Penhall. The lead role of the father will be played by Viggo Mortensen. Also joining the cast is Charlize Theron as the wife and
Robert Duvall as the old man. The film is set to open on October 16, 2009.
3. Proposed researched topic
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and American Modern Eschatology
Or Modern Eschatology of the 21st century America in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
4. Literature review:
As Cormac McCarthy is a newly-rising writer, we can not see so many tremendous academic studies of him as of other classical writers.
1) In USA, Cormac McCarthy didn’t receive critical attention until the 1990s.So far the American critics and postgraduates have conducted studies of him in the following aspects with a few achievements. In spite of his numerous awards and prizes, McCarthy is frequently considered as the successor of William Faulkner; however, with the popularity of No Country for Old Men and the great success of The Road, more mainstream critics and media keep an eye on this unknown famous writer.
a. Monologues, dialogues, sentence structures inspire scholars to explore autotextuality in McCarthy’s works. Christine Chollier brings forward the idea that the writer is a master in binding and interweaving different voices together to generate and enhance an impression of reality. It is the writer’s talent in picking and arranging words that renders his works an organic unity rarely found in other western novels.
Another thing that keeps attracting scholar’s attention is protagonists’ dreams, which, Edwin T. Arnold thinks, represent McCarthy’s “unique way of sharing world experience with readers”. Other themes, like wars, ethics, and modern technology, have all become the focuses of study. Some scholars ponder over another important theme in McCarthy’s works: human-nature relations. George Guillemin raises the idea that the writer is advocating a biocentric concept in all his books, which runs in contrast to the anthropocentric stance many western novels have assumed before. Guillemin points out that people’s hope to get closer to nature has been ruined by modern civilization. Barcley Owens, too, expresses the same concern over human’s attitudes towards nature and argues eloquently that McCarthy reveals his worry through the depiction of wilderness in his Border Trilogy.
In The Lay of the Land in Cormac McCarthy’s Appalachia, K. Wesley Berry shows his interest in examining the geological changes in McCarthy’s Appalachia. A lot of data are brought in for a conclusion that human’s activities have already caused damages to natural environment, and if not stopped, will continue to harm the planet people are living on. In another essay by Sara Spurgeon, the idea that nature deserves to be explored and used by human is totally undermined through a closer examination of the message McCarthy tries to pass on to us in his works. The
World on Fire deals with the same topic, but in a different way. Jacqueline Scoones finds McCarthy’s interest in portraying products of modern civilization and putting them in a setting of nature. Scoones insists that McCarthy intends to generate an odd contrast between civilization and nature, and to arouse a spontaneous hatred against people’s invasion into nature.
Researchers also notice the animal images in his works. Major analysis include George Guillemin’s Some Site Where Life had not Succeeded, in which he mentions that John Grady’s attitude changes toward horses represent the wakening of his goodwill to nature. Western Myths in All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing by Barcley Owens explicitly affirms wolves as a “spokesman” of nature. And everything people could see from the animal and its relations with human may serve as the evidence that McCarthy hopes for a harmonious coexistence between human and nature.
b）The Road has received numerous positive reviews and honors since its September 26, 2006 release. The review aggregator Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on 31 reviews. Critics have deemed it "heartbreaking," "haunting," and "emotionally shattering. The Village Voice referred to it as "McCarthy's purest fable yet." In a New York Review of Books article, author Michael Chabon heralded the novel. Discussing the novel's relation to established genres, Chabon insists The Road is not science fiction: although "the adventure story in both its modern and epic forms… structures the narrative," Chabon says, "ultimately it is as a lyrical epic of horror that The Road is best understood." Entertainment Weekly in June 2008 named The Road the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years, ahead of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Toni Morrison's Beloved.
British environmental campaigner George Monbiot was so impressed by The Road that he declared McCarthy to be one of the "50 people who could save the planet" in an article published in January 2008. Monbiot wrote, "It could be the most important environmental book ever. It is a thought experiment that imagines a world without a biosphere, and shows that everything we value depends on the ecosystem.” This nomination echoes the review Monbiot had written some months earlier for the Guardian in which he wrote, "A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world."
Academic essays on The Road are out of steps with its high praises. In Life of War, Death of the Rest, Tim Blackmore considers the way new nuclear technologies are inherently determinist, and reflects on the threat of the apocalyptic world as seen in The Road. In Cormac McCarthy and the Myth of American Exceptionalism published in 2008, John Cant studies the intertextuality between The Road and McCarthy’s former works, and suggests the novel “declares the
【二】:research-proposal范文
Research proposal
1. Title：
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and American Modern Eschatology
Or Modern Eschatology of the 21st century America in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
2. Introduction：
1).about the author:
a. Most Important achievements about Cormac McCarthy:
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright, who was once described as “the best unknown novelist in America”. So far McCarthy has written ten novels, one published five-act play, and one filmed screenplay, among which, novels are considered his most conspicuous literary achievements.
On May 5th, 2009, Cormac McCarthy has won the biennial PEN/Saul Bellow award for lifetime achievement in American literature, for "a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which places him or her in the highest rank of American literature".
He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He received a National Book Award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses.
His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005 and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner.
2. Proposed researched topic
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and American Modern Eschatology
Or Modern Eschatology of the 21st century America in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
3. Literature review:
As Cormac McCarthy is a newly-rising writer, we can not see so many tremendous academic studies of him as of other classical writers.
1) In USA, Cormac McCarthy didn’t receive critical attention until the 1990s.So far the American critics and postgraduates have conducted studies of him in the following aspects with a few achievements. In spite of his numerous awards and prizes, McCarthy is frequently considered
as the successor of William Faulkner; however, with the popularity of No Country for Old Men and the great success of The Road, more mainstream critics and media keep an eye on this unknown famous writer.
a. Monologues, dialogues, sentence structures inspire scholars to explore autotextuality in McCarthy’s works. Christine Chollier brings forward the idea that the writer is a master in binding and interweaving different voices together to generate and enhance an impression of reality. It is the writer’s talent in picking and arranging words that renders his works an organic unity rarely found in other western novels.
Another thing that keeps attracting scholar’s attention is protagonists’ dreams, which, Edwin T. Arnold thinks, represent McCarthy’s “unique way of sharing world experience with readers”. Other themes, like wars, ethics, and modern technology, have all become the focuses of study. Some scholars ponder over another important theme in McCarthy’s works: human-nature relations. George Guillemin raises the idea that the writer is advocating a biocentric concept in all his books, which runs in contrast to the anthropocentric stance many western novels have assumed before. Guillemin points out that people’s hope to get closer to nature has been ruined by modern civilization. Barcley Owens, too, expresses the same concern over human’s attitudes towards nature and argues eloquently that McCarthy reveals his worry through the depiction of wilderness in his Border Trilogy.
In The Lay of the Land in Cormac McCarthy’s Appalachia, K. Wesley Berry shows his interest in examining the geological changes in McCarthy’s Appalachia. A lot of data are brought in for a conclusion that human’s activities have already caused damages to natural environment, and if not stopped, will continue to harm the planet people are living on. In another essay by Sara Spurgeon, the idea that nature deserves to be explored and used by human is totally undermined through a closer examination of the message McCarthy tries to pass on to us in his works. The World on Fire deals with the same topic, but in a different way. Jacqueline Scoones finds McCarthy’s interest in portraying products of modern civilization and putting them in a setting of nature. Scoones insists that McCarthy intends to generate an odd contrast between civilization and nature, and to arouse a spontaneous hatred against people’s invasion into nature.
Researchers also notice the animal images in his works. Major analysis include George Guillemin’s Some Site Where Life had not Succeeded, in which he mentions that John Grady’s attitude changes toward horses represent the wakening of his goodwill to nature. Western Myths in All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing by Barcley Owens explicitly affirms wolves as a “spokesman” of nature. And everything people could see from the animal and its relations with human may serve as the evidence that McCarthy hopes for a harmonious coexistence between human and nature.
2) Cormac McCarthy’s works are still far from familiar to China’s literary circle.
From the data from CNKI, it is clear that Cormac McCarthy has gained Chinese Critics’
attention only in recent years, especially after the release of the movie No country for Old Men. Before 2007, there are only two essays on Cormac McCarthy, while since 2007, 5 essays and 5 graduate theses have chosen this writer and his works, two of which are based on The Road. However, those two just introduce the plots of the novel and some relevant information.
3. The Main Argument (and three sub-arguments):
This thesis will be carried out through the perspective of Modern Eschatology, especially in the views of the end days appeared after 911.
1. The destruction of the world in the novel and its metaphorical truth
2. The final judgments administered by the writer in the fictitious world and the crytic trial to the human civilization
3. The Post-Doomsday Vista portrayed in The Road and the suggested attitude of the writer to the human future.
4.Purpose and Significance of Study:
First, this thesis introduces Cormac McCarthy into China, who claims certain fame in the USA but is little known in China. Surely, McCarthy will get his familiarity and fame in China gradually in which this thesis will play an incentive role.
Second, social sciences see great initiation with the development of the modern nature sciences. The melting trend of different branches of sciences becomes more and more conspicuous. Many critics tend to analyze literary works from the point of philosophy, psychology, sociology, aesthetics, anthropology, etc. This thesis offers an example of such a trend.
Third, this thesis claims its enlightening function. It presents us a new angle of view into the contemporary American culture after the 911 effect.
5. A Detailed Sentence Outline:
Introduction
The part includes an introduction to Cormac McCarthy and The Road and literature reviews of existing findings. The origins, development and main thoughts of eschatology will be introduced as an important term for the thesis. Aside from those, a special attention will be given to how the 911 event effects the American culture and American literature.
Chapter One the violent destruction of the world in The Road
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