Thesis (Ph. D.)--Freien Universität Berlin, 1958. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-96).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2008. / Title from title screen (site viewed Mar. 10, 2009). PDF text: vii, 276 p. : ill. ; 34 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3331443. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University of Pennsylvania. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Uppsala. / Bibliography: p. 120-124.

This thesis explores the way Willa Cather’s writing parallels visual art’s tenebrism – a dramatic way of illuminating a single person, object or idea by juxtaposing light against dark. Throughout her career, Cather uses this technique to convey truths relating to self realization, aestheticism, spirituality, and social awakening.

Literature is a source that enriches students’ language ability on every level and short stories are a form that is suitable for adolescent students. To young people, memories from childhood are still close and vivid. To most these memories are mixed; among games and adventures there are both happiness and disappointments, both childhood friendships and betrayals. It is a topic everyone can talk about and many discussions can be developed from it. In addition, the short story is a genre that can be easily applied to the classroom because of its length. There is no great risk that the students will not remember the content of the story after reading. For students that are not pursuing further academic life, or low-performing students, short stories are definitely a better choice than novels. This essay sets out to compare three of Willa Cather’s short stories: “The Way of the World”, “The Enchanted Bluff” and “The Treasure of Far Island”. All three stories show us a childhood world as experienced by a group of children centered round a leader. These childhood worlds are portrayed from an adult perspective, with much beauty and nostalgia, giving a sense of the innocence, excitement and magic of a childhood paradise. The essay argues that it is through the power of children’s imagination that their paradise is created and that sooner or later paradise is lost. However, in the last of the three stories, the childhood paradise is regained in adulthood through the artistic imagination.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

My project is a discussion of the differing styles of narrative found in Willa Cathers <i>My Ántonia</i>. My paper is founded on the premise that these differing styles of narrative are emblematic of larger, more fundamental cultural differences in the novel. Using George Dekkers The American Historical Romance as my framework, I identify two prevailing cultures in Cathers novelprogressive culture and traditional cultureand suggest that the narrative and the narrator wavers between them. As traditional culture is linked by Dekker with both the rural and the oral, and progressive culture is linked with the urban and the literate, I examine how the narrators movement between the two locations creates a shift in narrative style. The differing narratives styles and the cultures of which they are representative have an uneasy relationship in <i>My Ántonia</i>, and this paper examines their presence and the possibility of their continued co-existence.

My project is a discussion of the differing styles of narrative found in Willa Cathers <i>My Ántonia</i>. My paper is founded on the premise that these differing styles of narrative are emblematic of larger, more fundamental cultural differences in the novel. Using George Dekkers The American Historical Romance as my framework, I identify two prevailing cultures in Cathers novelprogressive culture and traditional cultureand suggest that the narrative and the narrator wavers between them. As traditional culture is linked by Dekker with both the rural and the oral, and progressive culture is linked with the urban and the literate, I examine how the narrators movement between the two locations creates a shift in narrative style. The differing narratives styles and the cultures of which they are representative have an uneasy relationship in <i>My Ántonia</i>, and this paper examines their presence and the possibility of their continued co-existence.

Conditions in the field of American literature during the first four decades of the twentieth century were not always helpful or encouraging to aspiring writers in the United States. The literature which may be called characteristic of this period began with the novels which writers like Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser were publishing around 1900. These men initiated a new period in American writing, which developed in power and maturity especially during the twenties and thirties. For the first fifteen years of the century, however, neither academic criticism nor journalistic opinion were prepared to favor the new growth. Taking American universities as a measure of the prevailing attitude toward writers who were interested in becoming part of the new movement, Bernard De Voto pointed out that even as late as 1920 few universities provided any encouragement for the man (at the time he would hardly be called a scholar) who was interested primarily in literature written in the United States. Universities on the whole provided favorable climates only to that scholarship and criticism which was devoted to English literature of a respectable age, and looked upon American literature as “at best only a pleasant brook flowing toward the stream of English literature and acquiring merit only as it drew near.” Similarly the critical journals were not much interested in the American literary output. Even important periodicals like The Nation and The Bookman followed trends [...]