| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation is an interpretation of some of the more important works or Willa Cather in terms of the technique by which she conveys her own view of the true and the enduring. Much of the scholarship concerning Cather has heretofore been basically concerned with the people, experiences, and attitudes that represent the sources from which Miss Cather drew her material and her themes. The present study does not ignore that material, but it does attempt to draw attention to Cather's use of image and symbol in order to realize her goals and convey her themes. Accordingly, chapter one is a discussion of Cather's artistic theory as gleaned from newspaper interviews, prefaces, personal letters, early newspaper columns, and other miscellaneous essays. Such a synthesis indicates that Cather attempted to represent that which she had seen, known, and felt, in simple but suggestive prose which communicates much more than she actually writes. This paper argues that Cather achieved these goals primarily through her use of imagery, especially simile and metaphor, and through symbol. Chapter two traces metaphorical and symbolic elements in a number of the early short stories , including those in The Troll Garden (1905) and in Cather's first novel Alexander's Bridge (1912). Cather herself felt that most or her work published in the period 1892-1912 fell short of those standards she had eventually evolved. In this material there are, to be sure, numerous instances of excessive description, obtrusive editorializing, cliche images. But there is also clearly at work an artist experimenting and discovering those characters, situations, images, symbols, and themes which were to reappear in the later fiction. Chapter three is an interpretation or three major novels in which Cather uses material drawn from the Nebraska of her youth. Again a tracing of image and symbol patterns helps to reveal certain subtleties of characterization and theme O Pioneers (1913), My Antonia (1918), and A Lost Lady (1923). In these novels, and especially in A Lost Lady, Cather often repeats image and symbol patterns that were apparent in the work of her apprenticeship; but in the Nebraska novels she generally allows image and symbol to stand simply and unobtrusively, conveying through suggestion her insight into the lives or the characters and the significance of their actions. Chapter four argues that The Professor's House (1925) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) represent a culmination of Cather's themes and a further refinement of the simple yet suggestive style wherein image and symbol are used with both imagination and restraint. | |
