Landscapes of consciousness: A study of modern techniques in Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady," "The Professor's House," and "Death Comes for the Archbishop".
Item
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Title
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Landscapes of consciousness: A study of modern techniques in Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady," "The Professor's House," and "Death Comes for the Archbishop".
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Identifier
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AAI9946200
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identifier
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9946200
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Creator
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McMahon, Marybeth.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William P. Kelly
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, American
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Abstract
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This study explores the ways in which Willa Cather experimented with form and language to represent consciousness in three of her later novels, A Lost Lady, The Professor's House, and Death Comes for the Archbishop. In particular, Cather's method of using landscape and narrative point of view to represent and to explore interiority is examined through close readings of particular passages in the novels.;Cather's use of landscape to engage the modern problem of perception is also explored. Examples of landscape scenes that prompt the reader to examine not just what we see, but how we see it are considered. Cather's interest in perception is examined in relation to early modern painters like C6zanne and Monet who were likewise interested in exploring in their landscapes not merely what is seen by the eye, but how the mind perceives, and further how the artist creates.;Another feature of Cather's modernism is illustrated in the sublty shifting points of view Cather employed in these novels to explore the more hidden or obscure parts of a character's psychic life. Cather's experimentation with third person narratives that could adopt the angle of vision and the thought language of a particular character is examined in light of the narrative innovations of early modernists like Flaubert and Henry James and through close readings of particular passages in each of the novels.;A central feature of Cather's modernism and the foundation of this study is Cather's innovative style of language. I have examined ways in which Cather explores interiority and captures the rhythm of remembrance that was all important to her through a language peculiarly spare, unembellished, and eloquent even in its silences and moments of withholding observation. This study considers how Cather's use of language is far more sophisticated and elusive than it appears and offers us a kind of modern poetry that challenges the limits of language itself.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
