Mythologia Americana - Willa Cather's Nebraska Novels and the Myth of the Frontier

Mythologia Americana - Willa Cather's Nebraska Novels and the Myth of the Frontier PDF Author: Bernhard Wenzl
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640149092
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
Diploma Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: Sehr gut, University of Vienna, 115 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: America's collective memory rests on mythic regions: the planter's South, the Puritan's East, and the pioneer's West. It is the latter which covers a genuinely American experience. For almost three hundred years the westward expansion determined the nation's thought and action. Millions of pioneers were pouring into the Great West. By settling the country those people brought civilization to the wilderness. Their efforts at cultivating the virgin land helped to transform the prairie region into an agricultural empire. The pioneer age had a great influence on American history and its spirit was a vital factor in the formation of the national character. The effects of the frontier heritage are still strongly felt in American society and culture. As one of the three mythic regions, the pioneer's West forms an integral part of America's identity today. Willa Cather made her contribution to it in literature. Often regarded as among the best imaginative accounts of frontier life in American letters, O Pioneers (1913), My ntonia (1918), and A Lost Lady (1923) demonstrate Cather's poetic responses to the prairie West. These three novels illustrate her adaptation of the pioneering theme to the Great Plains region and reveal her preoccupation with history, memory, and identity on a national, regional, and individual scale. Their stories reflect her creative use of the popular myth of the frontier and the literary figure of the pioneer. As a rule, the novelist presents pioneer characters against a Nebraska background and places them at the centre of collective and private conflicts. Her artistic imagination turns to aspects usually left out from celebrations of the frontier experience in the rural West.

Mythologia Americana - Willa Cather's Nebraska Novels and the Myth of the Frontier

Mythologia Americana - Willa Cather's Nebraska Novels and the Myth of the Frontier PDF Author: Bernhard Wenzl
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640149092
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 122

Get Book

Book Description
Diploma Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: Sehr gut, University of Vienna, 115 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: America's collective memory rests on mythic regions: the planter's South, the Puritan's East, and the pioneer's West. It is the latter which covers a genuinely American experience. For almost three hundred years the westward expansion determined the nation's thought and action. Millions of pioneers were pouring into the Great West. By settling the country those people brought civilization to the wilderness. Their efforts at cultivating the virgin land helped to transform the prairie region into an agricultural empire. The pioneer age had a great influence on American history and its spirit was a vital factor in the formation of the national character. The effects of the frontier heritage are still strongly felt in American society and culture. As one of the three mythic regions, the pioneer's West forms an integral part of America's identity today. Willa Cather made her contribution to it in literature. Often regarded as among the best imaginative accounts of frontier life in American letters, O Pioneers (1913), My ntonia (1918), and A Lost Lady (1923) demonstrate Cather's poetic responses to the prairie West. These three novels illustrate her adaptation of the pioneering theme to the Great Plains region and reveal her preoccupation with history, memory, and identity on a national, regional, and individual scale. Their stories reflect her creative use of the popular myth of the frontier and the literary figure of the pioneer. As a rule, the novelist presents pioneer characters against a Nebraska background and places them at the centre of collective and private conflicts. Her artistic imagination turns to aspects usually left out from celebrations of the frontier experience in the rural West.

Willa Cather My Antonia

Willa Cather My Antonia PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN: 2322145521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Willa Cather My Ántonia : Unabridged Text with Introduction, Biography and Analysis My Ántonia is a novel published in 1918 by American writer Willa Cather, considered one of her best works. It is the final book of her "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and the elder daughter in a family of Bohemian immigrants, Ántonia Shimerda, who are each brought as children to be pioneers in Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Both the pioneers who first break the prairie sod for farming, as well as of the harsh but fertile land itself, feature in this American novel. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. This novel is considered Cather's first masterpiece. Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting. This edition includes the full original version of the Willa Cather's book and provides other valuable features under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, including a commented introduction, helpful bibliography, author's biography, notes, references, and much more.

The Spell Cast by Remains

The Spell Cast by Remains PDF Author: Patricia Ross
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135505039
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
First published in 2006. Examining the constituting mechanism of the American wilderness myth in Modern American literature, Patricia Ross probes the various purposes for which 'wilderness' is constructed. Considering the work of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Cather, she states that the idea of wilderness is just that, an idea, and not a real entity or something that deserves to be wasted in the chasm of deconstruction. Discovering how literature can help us to understand how we can exert causative control of the myths we create about ourselves, this book is an important contribution to the field.

Death Comes for the Archbishop

Death Comes for the Archbishop PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307805220
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Willa Cather's best known novel is an epic—almost mythic—story of a single human life lived simply in the silence of the southwestern desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows--gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended. BONUS: The edition includes an excerpt from The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.

My Antonia

My Antonia PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
My Antonia is a novel by an American writer Willa Cather. It is the final book of the "prairie trilogy" of novels, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. The novel tells the stories of an orphaned boy from Virginia, Jim Burden, and Antonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. They are both became pioneers and settled in Nebraska in the end of the 19th century. The first year in the very new place leaves strong impressions in both children, affecting them lifelong. The narrator and the main character of the novel My Antonia, Jim grows up in Black Hawk, Nebraska from age 10 Eventually, he becomes a successful lawyer and moves to New York City.

One of Ours

One of Ours PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: IndyPublish.com
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Claude has an intuitive faith in something splendid and feels at odds with his contemporaries. The war offers him the opportunity to forget his farm and his marriage of compromise; he enlists and discovers that he has lacked. But while war demands altruism, its essence is destructive

Converging Stories

Converging Stories PDF Author: Jeffrey Myers
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820327440
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
This book argues that in US literature, discourse on the themes of race and ecology is too narrowly focused on the twentieth century and does not adequately take into account how these themes are interrelated. This study broadens the field by looking at writings from the nineteenth century.

Under the Sun

Under the Sun PDF Author: Barbara Howard Meldrum
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"The scholarly standard of the contributions is uniformly high. Professor Meldrum has put forth a stimulating book on a central theme in Western literary studies."Western American Literature

O Pioneers!

O Pioneers! PDF Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
ISBN: 1454954582
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
When the Bergson family leave their home in Sweden to travel to the United States in search of a better life, they, like many immigrants, are awed by the beautiful harshness of their new life in Nebraska. When their father, John Bergson, grows sick and dies, he leaves the farm in the hands of his eldest daughter Alexandra Bergson. Resourceful and determined, Alexandra devotes her life to her family's farm, determined to prosper even as her neighbors are overwhelmed by the unremitting demands of pioneer life. But when she falls in love with her childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, Alexandra must choose between her duty to the land, and to her heart. A spirited celebration of the immigrants who have shaped the United States, O Pioneers! is a masterpiece by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

The Nature of the Place

The Nature of the Place PDF Author: Diane Dufva Quantic
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803288508
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
The Great Plains has long been fertile ground for literature. The Nature of the Place is a comprehensive study of novels and stories by such Plains writers as Willa Cather, Wright Morris, Mari Sandoz, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frederick Manfred, Wallace Stegner, and Bess Streeter Aldrich. Throughout, Diane Dufva Quantic is aware of the region’s collective social and cultural history—aware of the immensely fruitful clash between that complex history and Plains myth (such as “Garden of the World” and “Great American Desert”). In the vast and changeable Great Plains, as Wright Morris once remarked, “Many things would come to pass, but the nature of the place would remain a matter of opinion.”