Cather Studies, Volume 5

Cather Studies

Description

The wide-ranging essays collected in this volume of Cather Studies examine Willa Cather’s unique artistic relationship to the environment. Under the theoretical rubric of ecocriticism, these essays focus on Cather’s close observations of the natural world and how the environment proves, for most of these contributors, to be more than simply a setting for her characters. While it is certain that Cather’s novels and short stories are deeply grounded in place, literary critics are only now considering how place functions within her narratives and addressing environmental issues through her writing.

 

These essays reintroduce us to a Cather who is profoundly identified with the places that shaped her and that she wrote about: Glen A. Love offers an interdisciplinary reading of The Professor’s House that is scientifically oriented; Joseph Urgo argues that My Ántonia models a preservationist aesthetic in which landscape and memory are inextricably entangled; Thomas J. Lyon posits that Cather had a living sense of the biotic community and used nature as the standard of excellence for human endeavors; and Jan Goggans considers the ways that My Ántonia shifts from nativism toward a “flexible notion of place-based community.”

Sujets

• USA
• United States of America
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska Paperback
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803202429
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

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Series Editor

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Susan J. Rosowski, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Board Members

Elizabeth Ammons, Tufts University

Marilyn Arnold, Brigham Young University, Emerita

Blanche H. Gelfant, Dartmouth College

David Stouck, Simon Fraser University

James Woodress, University of California–Davis, Emeritus

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CatherStudies Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination

E D I T E D B Y S U S A N J . R O S O W S K I

U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E B R A S K A P R E S S

L I N C O L N & L O N D O N

©2003by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America   The series Cather Studies is sponsored by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in cooperation with the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation. issn 1045-9871 isbn 0-8032-6435–6

Frontispiece:

Willa Cather at Jaffrey, New Hampshire, about 1917. Courtesy Helen Cather Southwick

C O N T E N T S

Editorial Policy / vii

Introduction / ix S U S A N J . R O S O W S K I

Nature and Human Nature: Interdisciplinary Convergences on Cather’s Blue Mesa /1 G L E N A . L O V E

A Guided Tour of Ecocriticism, with Excursions to Catherland /28 C H E R Y L L G L O T F E L T Y My Á ntoniaand the National Parks Movement /44 J O S E P H U R G O

Biocentric, Homocentric, and Theocentric Environmentalism inO Pioneers!,iaonnt Á yM, and Death Comes for the Archbishop/64 P A T R I C K K . D O O L E Y

Willa Cather: The Plow and the Pen /77 J O S E P H W . M E E K E R

Willa Cather, Learner /89 T H O M A S J . L Y O N

The Comic Form of Willa Cather’s Art: An Ecocritical Reading /103 S U S A N J . R O S O W S K I

The Observant Eye, the Art of Illustration, and Willa Cather’sMy Á ntonia/128 J A N I S P. S T O U T

vi contents

Social (Re)Visioning in the Fields ofMyotn Á ain/153 J A N G O G G A N S

Modernist Space: Willa Cather’s Environmental Imagination in Context /173 G U Y R E YN O L D S

Wagner, Place, and the Growth of Pessimism in the Fiction of Willa Cather /190 P H I L I P K E N N I C O T T

Willa Cather’s Great Emersonian Environmental Quartet /199 M E R R I L L M A G U I R E S K A G G S

The Creative Ecology of Walnut Canyon: From the Sinagua to Thea Kronborg /216 A N N M O S E L E Y

Unmasking Willa Cather’s “Mortal Enemy” /237 C H A R L E S J O H A N N I N G S M E I E R

Admiring and Remembering: The Problem of Virgina /273 A N N R O M I N E S

Character, Compromise, and Idealism in Willa Cather’s Gardens /291 M A R K A . R . F A C K N I T Z

Contributors /309

Index /313

E D I T O R I A L

P O L I C Y

Cather Studies, a forum for Cather scholarship and criti- cism, is published biennially by the University of Nebraska Press. Submissions are invited on all aspects of Cather studies: biog- raphy, various critical approaches to the art of Cather, her liter- ary relationships and reputation, the artistic, historical, intellec- tual, religious, economic, political, and social backgrounds to her work. Criteria for selection will be excellence and originality. Manuscripts may vary in length from3,000to12,000words and should conform to the MLA Style Manual,1998edition. Please submit manuscripts in duplicate, accompanied by return postage; overseas contributors should enclose international reply coupons. BecauseCather Studiesadheres to a policy of anony- mous submission, please include a title page providing author’s name and address and delete identifying information from the manuscript. Manuscripts and editorial correspondence should be addressed to Susan J. Rosowski, Editor,Cather Studies, De- partment of English, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincolnne 68588-0333.

Introduction

S U S A N J . R O S O W S K I

Read together, the essays in this volume introduce us to the greening of literary studies, a.k.a. ecological literary studies, ecocriticism, environmental literary studies—all terms for a field that is young, in flux, and determined to remain so. These es- says also reintroduce us to a Cather we risk forgetting in recent decades’ focus first on gender, then on class and race. I’m referring to the Cather who is profoundly identified with the places that shaped her and that she wrote about. Place seems “poised to resume its place as a vital human con- cept,” Glen Love observes as he anticipates the next one hundred years when

literary scholars . . . will find themselves, along with other humanists and social scientists, engaged in important, eco- logically based interdisciplinary work with the natural sci- ences. We will necessarily become more interdisciplinary because we live in an increasingly interconnected world, because we need all the intellectual resources we can muster to find a sustainable place within it, and because we will see more and more the relatedness of all of this to the work we do as teachers and scholars of literature.

Love offers an interdisciplinary reading ofThe Professor’s House that is, “if not overtly scientific, at least leaning in that direction.” He calls for acknowledging archetypes (among other influences) in Cather’s art as representing “biology and the commonality of human nature.” Love argues for the role of science in literary criticism, not to replace interpretation but to reinvigorate it, in (for example) “reconsidering the interpretation of archetypes.”