Cather Studies, Volume 5: Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780803264359)

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 ﾁntonia 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 ﾁntonia shifts from nativism toward a "flexible notion of place-based community."

Author: Cather Studies
ISBN-10: 0803264356
ISBN-13: 9780803264359
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Language: English
Published: 09/01/2003
Pages: 327
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.94lbs
Size: 9.16h x 5.60w x 0.71d