SOURCE: Dow, William. “Topographical Strides of Thoreau: The Poet and Pioneer in Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.” Revue Française D'Études Américaines, no. 84 (March 2000): 89-105.

In the following essay, Dow examines Blood Meridian as a topographical study in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

A general knowledge of the topography is, then, the main guide, enabling one to determine where the trail ought to go—must go.¹

(John Muir)

We must look to the West for the growth of a new literature, manners, architecture, etc. Already there is more language there, which is the growth of the soil, than here …²

(Henry David Thoreau)

Throughout his career as a writer and naturalist, Thoreau wished to reinvent “a new literature” linked to topographies. He held constant to what I would term a “poet-pioneer” binary in which the figural representations of a “poet” interact with the actual experiences of...