Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2010
Document Type
Article
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 30:4 (Fall 2010).
Abstract
Willa Cather's last novel, set in Virginia where she spent her early childhood, is often a mystery to readers who know Cather by her loving evocation of Great Plains landscapes and cultures. This scholarly edition clarifies the seeming anomaly of Sapphira and the Slave Girl by placing it in its historical and biographical contexts, and by building from it an analysis of Cather's accomplishments and aesthetic concerns over the length of her career. The most significant achievement of this edition is that it will help scholars at every level understand the novel as evidence of Cather's involvement in public intellectual debates of her era, as well as of her complex personal involvement with the interrelation of memory, aesthetics, loss, and aging. The historical apparatus includes a long and elegant essay describing the places and people from Cather's Virginia childhood, with illustrations, that Cather used as models for her characters and setting. It describes 1930s debates about literature of the American South and race relations that influenced Cather's rendering of African American characters. The historical essay also describes the personal losses that may have motivated Cather's return to memory, as well as the formally experimental elements of the novel, such as the autobiographical epilogue.
Comments
Copyright © 2010 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.