According to cognitive poetics, text worlds and focalization are crucial elements in the formation of readers’ cognition of texts. The current study aimed at investigating the different layers of text worlds in Cormac McCarthy’s prose fictional text, Blood Meridian (1985), using Peter Stockwell’s model. The intersection of the different ways Blood Meridian could be read rendered this novel’s narrative discourse complex and given that there exist different worlds in the novel, the concepts of text worlds and focalization played a significant role in Blood Meridian and its reading. Due to limitations of scope, the present research focused on the novel’s main internal focalizer, namely the Judge, and explored the elements of the text worlds revolving around his discourse in selected passages from the novel. Finally, it was concluded that in the process of reading identifying text world features in novels like McCarthy’s Blood Meridian leads the readers to not only create the necessary discourse worlds based on what is disclosed through the novel’s various text worlds but also build connections between these worlds and their own actual and imagined text worlds. Thus, the present study showed that text worlds prove essential for both interpreting meaning and connecting prior knowledge to what is being read, resulting in appropriate inference on the part of readers of literature and learners of English as a Foreign language.
