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Finding her way: Willa Cather's poetics of religious expression
Abstract
Drawing on methodologies from cultural studies and New Historicism, along with theories of narrative, this dissertation explores the various uses Willa Cather made of religious forms of expression in her writing. A review of Cather's known religious associations and practices establishes the pivotal role religion played in forming her artistic principles. Her writing from the first half of her career--before "the world broke in two," in 1922 as she put it--reveals that she selected religious forms of discourse that would help communicate her ideas as they illustrated how to join art and religion. Cather brought to her early journalistic commentaries on literature, art, music, and culture, a traditional religious heritage including familiarity with the Bible and other religious texts. In this writing she progressed from mimicking an inherited literary tradition to developing her own unique aesthetic credo anchored in the language of religion. In her fiction, Cather uses religious expression to set her writing in a philosophical and aesthetic tradition. In O Pioneers! Cather writes out of the prophetic tradition, particularly the biblical book of Isaiah, establishing Alexandra Bergson as a visionary who can lead the reconciliation necessary to reestablish hope after tragedy. In The Song of the Lark Cather uses euphemistic imagery and language to explain the power of her female artist; in particular, she reclaims from secular usage the religious meanings of passion and sacrifice. Cather draws on the form of the parable in My Antonia, thus blending the power of religion and story to create a model of community-building based on shared experience. In One of Ours Cather presents religion as a tool of war and Prohibition propagondists; she thus provides a critique of the use of religious discourse for non-artistic purposes.
Subject Area
American literature
Recommended Citation
Shively, Steven B, "Finding her way: Willa Cather's poetics of religious expression" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9804337.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9804337