Modern American Literature Studies
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Abstract
Abstract
This article argues that the memoir of German immigrant Emil Frederick Wurzbach is an important but previously unrecognized historical source for Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Wurzbach’s memoir records a sequence of mid-1800s adventures that parallel several locations and episodes of the kid’s pre-Glanton gang journey. It also includes other emigration anecdotes adopted in the novel, particularly, the German brothers at the mission of Tumacacori. This new source offers a narrative template for the early kid and sheds light on McCarthy’s dark aesthetics of transforming hopeful immigrant testimony into an anti-Bildungsroman governed by war, dispossession, and violence.
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@article{Zheng2026Emil,
title = {Emil Frederick “Dutch” Wurzbach’s Memoir as a New Historical Source for Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian},
author = {Xianqing Zheng},
journal = {ANQ A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1080/0895769x.2026.2729810},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769x.2026.2729810}
}FAQ
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