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The poetics of "the thing not named": Willa Cather's tradition of silence
Abstract
The dissertation examines the role of silence in Willa Cather's literature by studying rhetorical uses of silence, metaphors of silence, and poetics of silence. Cather's exploration begins with a consideration of silence as a part of conversation, demonstrating the rhetorical impact of silence one character exerts upon another. As her work continues, Cather establishes metaphors of silence that reveal its richness. Building upon the contrasts between talk and silence as well as her use of metaphors, she creates a poetics of silence, which permits the reader to share in the experience of silence. The first chapter focuses on Cather's nonfiction to define significant terms and to establish Cather's artistic ideals. The second chapter consists of a brief examination of the poetry, and it argues that Cather begins by defining silence as absence of sound or life. The short stories provide the subject of the third chapter, which uses a linguistic approach to consider how Cather structured many of her stories around the problem of silence. The fourth chapter presents a brief study of the experience of silence in "A Wagner Matinee" followed by a chapter on O Pioneers!, which argues that interior silences are contrasted with conversational silences to reveal the main character's inner life. The sixth chapter argues that The Professor's House privileges a code of silence that is a part of the chivalric tradition, and the dissertation concludes by asserting that in "Two Friends" Cather brings the narrator and the reader together in a "transference of experience" made possible through the story's recreation of the poetics of silence.
Subject Area
Modern literature|American literature|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Turner, Elizabeth A, "The poetics of "the thing not named": Willa Cather's tradition of silence" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9425309.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9425309