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.”

Susan J. Rosowski (1942-2004) is the author of Birthing a Nation: Gender, Creativity, and the West in American Literature (Nebraska 1997).

"The thesis is sound and far ahead of the curve leading to this currently developing area of study."—Mike Nobles, Southwest Book Views

"It is difficult, I think, to imagine that any masterpiece can be re-visited in absolutely innovative terms, but Willa Cather's Ecological Imagination successfully expands our understanding of such major books as My Antonia and O Pioneers! At the same time, it broadens our appreciation for some of Cather's lesser-know work."—Ann Ronald, ISLE

"Carefully edited and refreshingly free of jargon, Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination is perhaps the best volume yet in a series that continues to offer fresh perspectives on one of the twentieth century’s greatest novelists."—Steven Trout, Great Plains Quarterly

"These essays compellingly demonstrate how Cather’s use of environment was political as well as aesthetic, meticulously grounded in detail as well as suggestive of symbolic significance."—Evelyn Funda, Journal of the West

“Rosowski has shed new light on Cather studies through an investigation of Cather’s work in the context of the emerging field of ecocriticism.”—Phoebe Jackson, College Literature

"Students and scholars of Willa Cather and those in the field of environmental studies will find this book helpful and appealing. These essays are grounded in the essential: the earth and our multifaceted relationship to it. Underlying them all is a remarkable simplicity, a clarity of focus, a sense that we're being reminded of the importance of place in an increasingly complex world."—Susan B. Andersen, American Literary Realism