Review of The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism.

Authors

Paul Comeau, British Columbia, Canada

Date of this Version

1987

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly SUMMER 1987 .Copyright 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism is a valuable and compelling addition to Cather criticism. Working from the late eighteenth century definition of romanticism-the process whereby the creative imagination locates meaning in the material world-Susan Rosowski demonstrates convincingly how the central tenets of romanticism informed the progress of Willa Cather's artistic vision as exemplified both in individual works and in the pattern of her canon. Accordingly, the possibility of discovering value in external objects is addressed in the optimistic early novels, of which Alexander's Bridge constitutes a romantic allegory of creativity, The Song of the Lark, Cather's Prelude, and A Lost Lady a Keatsian ode.