Candidate: Lisa Garvelink

Degree of: Doctor of Philosphy

Department: English

Title: Willa Cather: The Letters and Novels of a Romantic Modernist

Committee: Dr. Daneen Wardrop, Chair
Dr. Katherine Joslin
Dr. Nicolas Witschi
Dr. Kristin Sylvian

Date: Thursday, May 19, 2005 2:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m.
3011 Brown Hall

Abstract: Willa Cather believed the primary goal of art was to simplify, but she never believed the world to be a simple place. Her letters reveal abundant conflicted feelings about her own place in the world, while also revealing a concomitant determination to succeed at any cost. From O Pioneers! (1913) to Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940), her novels vary vastly, evidencing a complex dialectic between romantic absolutes and modernist uncertainties. Even in the novels most critics would see as notably romantic—specifically her earlier works—the modernist temperament and techniques create recognizable tension. Just as significantly, in her later, darker novels the romantic impulse refuses to be super­seded.

Though multiple scholars have investigated Cather's romanticism and others her modernism, to date none has discovered the continuity and interdependence of these strands throughout her entire body of work. Examination of her correspondence—which is barred from publication but may be paraphrased --reveals the genesis of many of her ideas. This study elucidates the power of Cather's work which lies in the fascinating interplay between the romanticism she refuses to part with and the modernism she bravely embraces.

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