薇拉.凯瑟小说中的音乐与自我实现
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Abstract
摘要
Contents ............................................................................................................................ 1
Introduction .......................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1 A Brief Review of the Previous Studies on Willa Cather ................................ 5
§1.1 Frontier spirit and American dream ................................................................... 5
§1.2 Artistic Approach ............................................................................................... 6
§1.3 Feminist Approach ............................................................................................. 7
§1.4 Narrative Technique ........................................................................................... 7
Chapter 2 Self-Actualization and Self-Actualizing Characters ........................................ 9
§2.1 Gratification and Self-Actualization .................................................................. 9
§2.1.1 Hierarchy of Needs ................................................................................ 10
§2.1.2 St. Peter: Ungratified Needs and Meta-pathology ................................. 12
§2.1.3 Tom Outland: An Exception to Hierarchy of Needs .............................. 15
§2.1.4 Thea: Full Gratification and Gratification Health ..................................17
§2.1.5 Spiritual Homeland: An Ultimate Sense of Belonging .......................... 21
§2.2 Grumble Theory and Meta Grumblers .............................................................23
Chapter 3 Typical Characteristics of Self-actualizers .....................................................28
§3.1 Enjoying Loneliness .........................................................................................28
§3.2 Prominence of the Being Need and Meta Motivation ......................................29
§3.3 Peak Experience and Plateau Experience ........................................................ 31
§3.4 Devotion and Dedication: Transcending Dichotomy .......................................34
§3.5 Creativeness ..................................................................................................... 34
Chapter 4 Music and Self-Actualization ......................................................................... 36
§4.1 Sonata Form and the Contrast of Two Self-Actualizing Motifs ...................... 36
§4.2 Musical References and Allusions ................................................................... 39
§4.2.1 Connais-tu le Pays from Mignon ...........................................................39
§4.2.2 Silence of the Music ...............................................................................40
§4.2.3 Cluck’s Orpheus.....................................................................................40
§4.2.4 Grieg’s Tak for Dit Råd (Thanks for Your Advice) ................................ 41
§4.2.5 Wagner’s Opera ............................................................................................42
§4.3 Music and Peak Experience ............................................................................. 42
§4.4 Music as a Means of Self-Actualization and Self-Actualization as a
Continuous Process .................................................................................................. 43
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 46
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................48
在读期间公开发表的论文和承担科研项目及取得成果
Introduction
1
Introduction
I shall be the first one to bring muse into this country. –Willa Cather
Willa Cather was a brilliant American female writer of the early twentieth
century. Although her name is not familiar to Chinese readers, her influence and
reputation in America and Europe is quite far-reaching. As the Pulitzer Prize
winner for literature, Willa Cather devoted her life to her writing career. Among
her works, the ones most remembered are fictions. In the last two decades of her
life, she was such a celebrity that she could not walk through Central Park without
being asked for her autograph (Cather, 1994: ix).
We can now say with confidence that Willa Cather ranks among the most
enduring writers in American literature. When Sixteen Modern American Authors
was published in 1973, Willa Cather was the only female writer included. The
famous novelist Sinclair Lewis even said that his Nobel Prize should have gone to
Cather (Cather, 1994: viii). Cather’s reputation in the academic circle is high. At
present the Willa Cather International Seminar is held every two years, attracting
scholars from all over the world to explore the beauty and depth of her writings.
Born in a small Virginia town on December 7, 1873, Willa Cather moved with
her family first to a prairie farm in Nebraska and then settled down in a small town
named Red Cloud. Compared to Virginia, Nebraska at that time was a stretch of
ruff and desolate land, devoid of the polish of civilization. The inhabitants there
were mainly immigrants from Europe, who came to America to seek the American
dream. It was these people and their struggles that inspired Willa Cather, especially
in the early stage of her writing.
Before she went to the University of Nebraska, Willa Cather had lived in Red
Cloud for six years. Cather once said that the years between the age of eight and
fifteen are crucial to a writer’s career, because it is during this period that one
collects the raw materials for creative works (Bennett：
151). Her years in this small
western town provided her with one of the most important ingredients of her
fictions—the pioneer spirit.
Willa Cather’s university career was a new chapter in her life. Before that she
had been appreciative of music and had taken music lesson in Red Cloud, but it
was during her studies at the University of Nebraska that she acquainted herself
with music as an art form. She often attended concerts in the company of a local
Music and Self-Actualization in Willa Cather’s Fiction
2
music critic and learned from him many stories about the artists he had known.
From time to time she went to Chicago to attend the opera. In fact, the spring
before her commencement, she stayed in Chicago for a whole week so she could
attend the opera every night (ibid: 156).
In addition to being a regular attendant of the local opera house, Cather also
worked as a critic for the newspaper. She wrote comments on opera, drama and
painting for the Nebraska State Journal and the Lincoln Courier. After her
graduation she became the literary editor for a magazine in Pittsburg, and later
moved to New York. Each move brought her more opportunities to be close to the
arts. Her friendship with the famous opera singer Olive Fremstad inspired her to
write The Song of the Lark, one of her best novels.
Although Cather had always been a diligent contributor to various magazines,
her career as a full-time writer did not begin until 1912 when she published her
first novel, The Bridge of Alexander. A year later, O Pioneer! (1913) was published.
It was one of her greatest novels, followed by The Song of the Lark (1915), My
Antonia (1918), and Youth and Bright Medusa (1920). She won the Pulitzer Prize
for fiction in 1922 for her less-know novel One of Ours.
One of Ours marks the dividing line between Cather’s earlier works and her
later works. Between these two periods her feelings about life and the world
changed, causing the tone of her works to shift dramatically. She once said, “The
world broke in two about 1920, and I belong to the former half” (ibid.148). The
time of this transition roughly corresponds to the duration of the First World War.
In fact the story One of Ours takes place around the First World War, which is a
critical factor influencing the fates of the characters in this novel, in both a physical
and spiritual sense. It destroys not only the old civilization, but also people’s faith
in human value, which accounts for the pessimism one senses in Cather’s later
novels. Although pessimism permeates most of her later works, Cather’s
protagonists still search for the meanings of their lives in spite of the setbacks and
evil fates in store for them.
The later works of Willa Cather include A Lost Lady (1923), The Professor’s
House (1925), Death Comes for the Archibishop (1927), Shadows on the Rock
(1921), Lucy Gayheart (1935), etc.
Introduction
3
This essay will analyze Willa Cather’s two fictions—The Song of the Lark and
The Professor’s House from both psychological and musical perspectives. The
former is a representative fiction of her earlier works and the latter is one of her
best later works. Although the two are different in tone, they share two things in
common—music and self-actualization. The main purposes of this thesis are to
examine the inner world of Cather’s characters and the manner in which Cather
uses music in her novels.
Plot had never been Cather’s main concern; the richness of the inner world of
her characters is what her focus was directed on. Her most art form has a simple
plot line supported by a depth of submerged meaning (Giannone: 84). An analysis
of the characters from the self-actualization perspective will surely offer a better
understanding of Willa Cather’s characters.
Self-actualization is a psychological term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, then
developed into a systematic theory by Abraham Maslow. Self-actualization
basically means that one should strive to be the best person one should be and to
become fuller and stronger every day (Xu, 1988: 54). Self-actualization is the
essence of the pioneer spirit when it comes to Willa Cather’s fictions. The word
“self-actualization” carries a connotation broader than “pioneer spirit”. It is where
the vitality of Cather’s works lies and it is a common virtue shared by most of the
protagonists in her fictions. Although Willa Cather never uses the term
self-actualization, she expresses the exact same meaning through Thea in The Song
of the Lark that one “ought to grow fuller and stronger and rounder everyday
(Cather, 2004: 141)”.
In The Professor’s House, Cather makes “a contemplation on the struggle to
achieve wholeness” (Cather, 1989: preface) by interweaving the stories of two
individual’s efforts to gain personal developments. Human beings' struggle to
achieve wholeness by self-discovery is actually what Maslow’s self-actualization
theory is about. Likewise, The Song of the Lark tells a story of an artist’s
self-discovery and her creative growth. Based on a combination of Willa Cather’s
own experience and accomplishment of Olive Fremstad, the opera diva of Cather’s
time, The Song of the Lark shows us it is possible for an individual to become
fuller and rounder through strenuous and unrelenting efforts.
Music and Self-Actualization in Willa Cather’s Fiction
4
Besides self-actualization, music is another element that draws the reader’s
attention. Music in Cather’s works is not accidental, nor is it just an extension of
her personal interest in musical art. Cather’s love for music and her association
with musicians make music an integral part of her works. Music is inseparable
from her life and her works, and musical characters are not uncommon in her
fictions, such as the musician Thea from The Song of the Lark. As Edith Louise,
one of Cather’s best friends put, “Music, for Willa Cather, was hardly at all an
intellectual interest. It was an emotional experience that had a potent influence on
her own imaginative process—quickening the flow of her ideas, suggesting new
forms and association, translating itself into parallel movement of thought and
feeling” (Louise: 47). Without music Cather’s fictions would not be the same as
what we read now.
The two novels to be analyzed here are saturated with music. The structure of
The Professor’s House bears a strong musical influence as it was originally
conceived of as a sonata (Giannone: 152); The Song of the Lark tells the story of a
musician’s persistent pursuit of success. Needless to say, music holds an important
position in these two novels.
Furthermore, music and self-actualization are interwoven in the two novels.
Music in her fictions assumes an important role other than polishing the text. The
need of self-actualization makes Cather’s characters different from the common
people, and it is through music that their needs and determination are best
expressed. For Thea in The Song of the Lark, music even becomes her means of
realizing herself, and music is equivalent to self-actualization—her pursuit of
music is her pursuit of self-actualization. Therefore, it will be all the more
meaningful to examine these two novels by both musical and psychological
approach.
摘要：
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作者：赵德峰
分类：高等教育资料
价格：15积分
属性：52 页
大小：472.98KB
格式：PDF
时间：2024-11-19
