生态美的歌唱家,精神美的捍卫者—试析薇拉•凯瑟研究复兴的现实意义

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Contents

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...i

摘要……………………………………………………………………………………..ii

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………...iv

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..1

Chapter 1 A Brief Review of Previous Studies of Willa

Cather……………………...6

§1.1 The Pioneer Spirit and the American Dream…………………………….6

§1.2 Myths and Archetypes in Cather’s Works………………………….........8

§1.3 Feminist Criticism of Cather’s Works……………………………….......8

§1.4 Eco-criticism of Cather’s Works……………………………………….10

Chapter 2 Human-nonhuman Relationship……………………………………........12

§2.1 Brief Introduction to Land Ethic and Deep Ecology…………………...12

§2.1.1 Aldo Leopold and the Land Ethic……………………………….......12

§2.1.2 Arne Naess and Deep Ecology………………………………………13

§2.2 Human-nonhuman Relationship of Today’s China…………..................14

§2.2.1 Human Attitude toward the Land……………………………………15

§2.2.1.1 Man – Designer of the Wilderness……………………………….15

§2.2.1.2 Man – Abuser of the Land……………………………………….15

§2.2.1.3 Man – Destroyer of the Land…………………………………….16

§2.2.2 Human Attitude toward Animals……………………………………17

§2.2.2.1 Man – Slaughter of Animals…………………………………......17

§2.2.2.2 Man – Conqueror of Animals……………………………………18

§2.2.2.3 Man – Friend of Animals?.............................................................19

§2.2.3 Ecological Crisis of Our Day……………………………………......19

§2.2.3.1 Symptoms of the Ecological Crisis………………………………20

§2.2.3.2 Root of Our Ecological Crisis……………………………………21

§2.3 Ecological Instructions from Willa Cather…………………………......22

§2.3.1 Lover of the Land: Alexandra……………………………………….22

§2.3.2 Friend of the Animals: Ivar………………………………………….24

§2.3.3 Daughter of Nature: Antonia…………………………………….......26

§2.3.4 A New Ecological Worldview……………………………………….28

§2.3.4.1 Conservation of the Land………………………………………...29

§2.3.4.2 Affinity with Mother Nature…………………………………......30

§2.3.4.3 From Material Life to Spiritual Life…………………………......30

Chapter 3 Interpersonal Relationship……………………………………………….32

§3.1 Interpersonal Relationship of Our Day…………………………………32

§3.1.1 A World of Indifference and Estrangement………………………….32

§3.1.2 A World of Pride and Prejudice………………………………….......34

§3.2 Harmonious Interpersonal Relationship in Cather’s Artistic World……36

§3.2.1 Understanding of, Respect for and Tolerance to Each Other………..36

§3.2.2 Caring for and Learning from Each Other…………………………..39

Chapter 4 Relationship between Man and His Self…………………………………42

§4.1 People’s Spiritual State in Our Day…………………………………….42

§4.1.1 The Lost Modern People…………………………………………….42

§4.1.2 The Spiritual Crisis of Our Society…………………………….........44

§4.2 Spiritual Beauty in Cather’s Artistic World…………………….............46

§4.2.1 Optimistic Attitude toward Life: to Make the Most Out of it….........46

§4.2.2 Courage and Imagination in Pursuit of Self-identity and

Prosperity…………………………………………………………...48

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………......52

Works Cited………………………………………………………………………........54

在校期间公开发表的论文和承担科研项目及取得成果

Introduction

Willa Cather (1873-1947) was a talented woman writer in the first half of the 20th

century. She is best known for her depiction of the trying yet inspiring frontier life of

the pioneers in the Midwestern America. Her writing style is fresh and genuine, natural

and spontaneous. The public has embraced her works warmly ever since the publication

of her first novel Alexander’s Bridge in 1912. With her triptych O, Pioneers! (1913),

The Song of the Lark (1915) and My Antonia (1918), she successfully established

herself as a first-rate regional writer in American literature. In 1922, she won Pulitzer

Prize for a less-known novel dealing with war experiences One of Ours, with more of

other awards to follow.

Cather was born in Virginia, outside Winchester. At the age of nine her family

went west and settled in south-central Nebraska, near Red Cloud. The section had

previously been peopled, soon after the opening of the Union Pacific and Burlington

Railways, in the late 1860s, by Norwegians, Swedes, Russians, and Czechs. Much of

the country was still raw prairie (Schroeter 130). The melting pot of the country offered

young Cather a chance to observe and absorb various cultures of the immigrants, which

became the wellspring of her writing career.

Cather did not attend primary school, but she obtained a comprehensive family

education, including appreciation of music, study of Latin and Greek and an extensive

reading of English classics. In 1890, she entered the University of Nebraska, turned a

new leaf of her life and made her first step into the domain of letters with her dramatic

criticisms of theatre reviewing for the Nebraska State Journal, she herself being a

regular theatre-goer and showing a fine taste for plays, concerts and the like.

After graduation in 1895, she took the job in 1896 as assistant editor of a new

Pittsburgh magazine the Home Monthly for a year and then as telegraph editor on the

Pittsburgh Leader. During this period she wrote a large amount of journalism and

continued writing book and theatre reviews for several magazines. Early at that time it

was quite clear to everyone who knew and read her that “she is unquestionably destined

to be among the foremost of American literary women” (Lee 41). During her teaching

career from 1901 to 1906, Cather published her first collection of pastorals April

Twilights (1903) and her first collection of stories The Troll Garden (1905), which

helped her win a post as editor for the McClure’s, one of the most famous publications

Eulogizer of the Ecological Harmony, Defender of the Spiritual Beauty:

On the Resurgence of the Realistic Significance of Willa Cather Study

in the country. Willa Cather, the immigrant girl from Nebraska, thus made a further step

into the outer world.

Diligent as she was, Cather could not find much leisure for writing at the

McClure’s. Following a famous woman writer Sarah Orne Jewett’s advice, Cather

turned a full-time writer in 1912, shortly after the completion of her first novel

Alexander’s Bridge. From then on, she went from the “parish” to the “world”, found her

“quiet center of life” and began trying to “write to the human heart” (qtd. in Randall III

60-61), leaving the world 16 novels, 55 short stories, 2 collections of poems, 1

collection of essays and 8 other relevant works ( 朱炯强,精选集 5), enjoying great

fame and winning many awards including Pulitzer Prize (1923), Howells Medal (1930),

Prix Femina Americaine (1932), Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and

Letters (1944), and honorary degrees from University of Nebraska, University of

Michigan, University of California, Columbia University, Yale University, Princeton

and Creighton (http://gustavus.edu/academics/english/cather/awards.html).

The major themes of Cather’s works can be roughly divided into three categories:

the spirit of the frontier in both modern and ancient times; the threat to that spirit in the

encroachment of materialism and selfish acquisitiveness; and the nature of the artist (qtd.

in 杨27-8). Critics have also found a noticeable change in the tone of her writing since

the 1920s, and Cather once admitted that: “the world broke in two about 1920, and I

belonged to the former half” (Bennett 148). Due much to WWI and its aftermath, her

works after the war, e.g. A Lost Lady (1923), Professor’s House (1925), My Mortal

Enemy (1926) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) were tinged with a sense of

loss and nostalgia, and a touch of anxiety and unease in an ever materialized and

industrialized society.

In retrospect, the early critiques of Cather and her works were quite positive and

appreciative. Maxwell Geismar, a famous critic, acclaimed Cather as “an aristocrat in an

equalitarian order, an agrarian writer in an industrial order, a defender of the spiritual

graces in the midst of an increasingly materialistic culture” (qtd. in 毛199-200). In

1924, when Sixteen Modern American Writers was published, Cather was the only

woman writer chosen in it (杨24). According to Stephanie Vaughn, Sinclair Lewis is

reported to have said in 1930 that his Nobel Prize should have gone to Cather (qtd. in

Cather, Antonia x). In the heyday of her career, she could not pass the Central Park

without being asked for signature (ibid). However, from the 1930s till the 1950s, a

Introduction

period which first witnessed the Great Depression and then a relatively rapid

development of capitalism, due to their inability to reflect the American reality, her

works went gradually out of favor and her voice was at one time silenced. In the 1960s,

with the rise of feminist movement, feminist criticism emerged and flourished. The

successful characterization of female antagonists in Cather’s works once more arrested

the attention of the critical circles. Meanwhile, as the worldwide ecological crisis

becomes severer, eco-criticism has come into being and provided a new perspective for

Cather study. Today, critics sing high praise for Cather and her works, listing her as one

of the greatest novelists in American literary history together with the most outstanding

figures such as Henry James, Hemingway and Faulkner (朱炯强,创作 76). In October

1973, an international seminar entitled “The Art of Willa Cather” was held in Lincoln,

Nebraska. At present, the International Cather Seminar is held biennially, attracting lots

of participants to explore and appreciate the diversity and beauty of Cather’s art. Cather

study, after its first stage of popularity and then a long period of negligence, is now

experiencing a vigorous resurgence and making lots of inspiring achievements.

Internationally Cather study is blooming and flourishing, but back in China, it has

rather a late start and enjoys but a brief history of about two decades, beginning with the

translation of Cather’s fictions in the early 1980s. Until recently, with so much going on

centered on Cather internationally, Cather study is rapidly gaining popularity among

scholarship and readership in China, witnessing the publication of an increasing number

of essays and dissertations on Cather and her works from various perspectives. Sun

Hong, a famous professor and Ph. D. supervisor in Renmin University, has been

undertaking a project of “The Historical Evolution and Critical Experience of Cather

Studies” sponsored by the National Fund of Philosophy and Social Sciences, and has

published several instructive essays concerning Cather study. Generally, the focus of the

Chinese scholarship is on the analysis and appreciation of Cather’s works from different

angles, for instance, representation of the pioneer spirit and the American dream in

Cather’s works, myths and archetypes in her works, feminist criticism, eco-feminist

criticism and the newly-rising approach: ecological criticism. Also, there are some

essays illustrating Cather’s narrative techniques and her employment of art forms such

as music and painting in her works. However, books particularly on Cather and her

works remain quite few. And what is more, up to now research into the realistic

significance of the resurgence of Cather study in today’s China is little. And the author

Eulogizer of the Ecological Harmony, Defender of the Spiritual Beauty:

On the Resurgence of the Realistic Significance of Willa Cather Study

of this thesis believes that the resurgence of Cather study is of great significance to the

present society of China. Interested in and inspired by the achievements of Cather study

in China, the author of this thesis makes an attempt to probe into the realistic

significance of the resurgence of Cather study on the basis of an analysis of the major

concerns in Cather’s two early novels O, Pioneers! and My Antonia, which roughly deal

with three major themes: the relationship between man and nature, between man and

man, and between man and his self. The author sincerely hopes that this thesis will

show the positive impact of Cather’s works on the reality in China, and dig out the

cause of the resurgence of Cather study as well.

This thesis includes five chapters altogether. Chapter 1 is a literature review, in

which a brief survey of the previous studies of Cather and her works is made, and the

major findings and achievements are provided. The following three chapters serve as

the body of the thesis, exposing the ecological harmony and spiritual beauty in Cather’s

O, Pioneers! and My Antonia from three aspects: the relationship between man and

nature, the relationship between man and man, the relationship between man and his

self, in the hope of shedding some light on the natural and spiritual ecology during the

course of China’s modernization. Chapter 5 comes as the conclusion, pointing out the

necessity and realistic significance of the resurgence of Cather study.

Witnessing the deterioration of our living environment, we are forced to

retrospect on our attitude toward Mother Nature. Cather, a nature-lover, gives her

ecological imagination full expression in her works. In the above mentioned novels, the

harmonious co-existence between human and non-human worlds is almost a common

voice of all people in all places nowadays. The ecological philosophy consciously or

unconsciously revealed in these novels admirably agrees with many principles of

Leopold’s “Land Ethic” and Arne Naess’ deep ecology theory, for instance, man is only

a member of a biotic team, and man should respect his fellow-members and the

community as such (Leopold 254); every form of life is entitled a right to live and to

prosper (Sessions 26). Ironically enough, up to now many of our practices still go

against these principles. Therefore, it is necessary to read Cather, to listen to her and to

learn the lesson she teaches.

While we are heading proudly toward an industrialized and urbanized society,

fierce competition and fast-paced life are exerting a great impact on our interpersonal

relationship and the well-being of our inner world, causing estrangement among people

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摘要：

ContentsAcknowledgements……………………………………………………………………...i摘要……………………………………………………………………………………..iiAbstract………………………………………………………………………………...ivIntroduction……………………………………………………………………………..1Chapter1ABriefReviewofPreviousStudiesofWillaCather……………………...6§1.1ThePioneerSpiritandtheAmericanDream…………………………….6§1.2Myt...

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