Cather Studies, Volume 8

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Cather Studies, Volume 8

Willa Cather: A Writer's Worlds

Edited by John J. Murphy, Françoise Palleau-Papin, and Robert Thacker 

Cather Studies Series

492 pages
27 illustrations

Paperback

November 2010

978-0-8032-3025-5

$40.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

The essays in Cather Studies, Volume 8 explore the many locales and cultures informing Willa Cather’s fiction. A lifelong Francophile, Cather first visited France in 1902 and returned repeatedly throughout her life. Her visits to France influenced not only her writing but also her interpretation of other worlds: for example, while visiting the American Southwest in 1912, a region that informed her subsequent works, she first viewed that landscape through the prism of her memories of Provence. Cather’s intellectual intercourse between the Old and the New World was a two-way street, moving both people and cultural mores between the two. But her worlds extended far beyond France, or even geographical locations. This new volume pairs Cather innovatively with additional influences—theological, aesthetic, even gastronomical—and examines her as tourist and traveler cautiously yet assiduously exploring a diverse range of places, ethnicities, and professions.

Author Bio

John J. Murphy is a professor emeritus at Brigham Young University. He is the volume editor of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of Death Comes for the Archbishop (Nebraska 1999) and coeditor of the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition of Shadows on the Rock (Nebraska 2005). Françoise Palleau-Papin teaches American literature at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle and is the author of This Is Not a Tragedy: The Works of David Markson. Robert Thacker is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University. He is the author of The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination and the coeditor of Cather Studies, Volume 4: Willa Cather’s Canadian and Old World Connections (Nebraska 1999).
 
Contributors: Manuel Broncano, Marc Chénetier, Joshua Dolezal, Mathieu Duplay, Stéphanie Durrans, Evelyn I. Funda, Cristina Giorcelli, Richard C. Harris, Melissa J. Homestead, Andrew Jewell, Jean-François Leroux, Mark Madigan, Ann Moseley, John J. Murphy, Joseph C. Murphy, Elsa Nettels, Julie Olin-Ammentorp, Françoise Palleau-Papin, Charles A. Peek, David H. Porter, Diane Prenatt, Ann Romines, Janet Sharistanian, Merrill Maguire Skaggs, John N. Swift, Robert Thacker, and Joseph Urgo.

Praise

"Cather Studies continues to assemble and inspire the most well-informed writing on Willa Cather's life and literature. The twenty-three essays in this volume further elevate Cather's reputation for meticulous attention to detail when presenting various cultures in her fiction."—Derek Driedger, Great Plains Quarterly

"Cather Studies has long been the repository of worthwhile scholarship, and this eighth volume does not disappoint. Catherians who missed the European seminar will learn much from this readable, revelatory, and elegantly designed volume."—Timothy W. Bintrim, Western American Literature

Table of Contents

Editorial Policy
Introduction: Translating Cather's Worlds
Françoise Palleau-Papin and Robert Thacker
 
Prelude: The Prophetess and the Professor: Rescuing Cather from the Past
Charles A. Peek
 
Part 1. Cather and France, Cather and French Literature
1. Sorbonne Keynote Address: Shadows of a Rock: Translating Willa Cather
Marc Chénetier
2. "The Bravest Act of His Life": Cather, Claude, and the Disadvantages of a Prairie Childhood
Elsa Nettels
3. Willa Cather in Paris: The Mystery of a Torn Photograph
Mark J. Madigan
4. "Pershing's Crusaders": G. P. Cather, Claude Wheeler, and the <SC>aef</SC> Soldier in France
Richard C. Harris
5. Claude Wheeler's Three Joans in One of Ours
Janet Sharistanian
6. From St. Joan to Madame Joubert: Pilgrimage and Ethnic Memory
Diane Prenatt
7. Willa Cather's One of Ours, Edith Wharton's A Son at the Front, and the Literature of the Great War
Julie Olin-Ammentorp
8. Willa Cather's La comédie humaine
Ann Moseley
9. Willa Cather: Flaubert's Parrot?
Merrill Maguire Skaggs
10. The Temptation of St. Peter: Flaubert's Saint Anthony and Cather's The Professor's House
Stéphanie Durrans
11. Chance Meetings in Southern France
David H. Porter
 
Part 2. Great Facts and Aesthetic Techniques
12. "As in a Mirror and a Symbolism": Pascal's Mystical Theology and Cather's Divine Geometry in Death Comes for the Archbishop
Jean-François Leroux
13. Cather's Ruskinian Landscapes: Typologies of the New World
Joseph C. Murphy
14. "The Thrill of His Own Poor Little Nerve": Art and the Ambivalence of Voice in My Mortal Enemy
Mathieu Duplay
15. Writing and/as Weaving: Shadows on the Rock and La dame à la licorne
Cristina Giorcelli
16. Chocolate, Cannibalism, and Gastronomical Meaning in Shadows on the Rock
Andrew Jewell
 
Part 3. Other Worlds, Other Places
17. Willa Cather in Space: Exile, Vagrancy, and Knowing
John N. Swift
18. Report from Cherry Valley, Where Willa Cather Was Very Likely "Overcome by a Feeling of Place"
Joseph R. Urgo
19. Edith Lewis as Editor, Every Week Magazine, and the Contexts of Cather's Fiction
Melissa J. Homestead
20. Picturing Their Ántonia(s): Mikolá<s^> Ale<s^> and the Partnership of W. T. Benda and Willa Cather
Evelyn I. Funda
21. Willa Cather's Hispanic Epiphanies and The Professor's House
Manuel Broncano
22. Losing and Finding Race: Old Jezebel's African Story
Ann Romines
23. The Fire in the Ash: Dissent and Progressivism in Cather's "Double Birthday"
Joshua Dolezal
 
Postlude: The Green Vase, the Yellow Orange, and the White Chapel: Trying to Define an Art
John J. Murphy
 
Contributors
Index

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