A Study Of Willa Cather’s Novels From The Perspective Of Literary Regionalism

The swift development of literary critical theories since1970’s leads to theformation of recent multiple perspectives in Willa Cather’s study. Many criticalapproaches include Willa Cather into their research sphere which brings this oncediminished literary giant of early20thcentury back to our sight. The complexities incharacters, theme, structures, etc. and indefiniteness in meaning of Cather’s novelsmake it possible for the implementation of various critical theories. Actually it is herlove of place secured her, a writer deeply invested in particular places, a globalreadership. However, regional writing has been pushed to the margin of literaryresearch for a long time. As a winner of Pulitzer Prize of Literature, Cather’s status asAmerican literary central figure was once unshakeable. However, some critics labeledher as a nostalgist or an elegist on account of her intense sense of place andappreciation of the elapsing and Other civilizations presented in her novels, andaccused her of being retrospective and escaping. This narrow and reduced perceptionof Cather’s regional writings limited deeper understanding of her regional poetics.Contemporary literary regionalism takes place as the basic category forunderstanding human perception and culture. Place is treated as more specific conceptwith fixed meaning compared with space, which represents a more popular cognitivetendency in present society. Regional literature criticism treats region as dynamic andmobile, which rectifies many critics’ absenteeism in regard to physical environment.Moreover, it surpasses the restriction of traditional regionalism by including city intoits sphere making the definition of region more comprehensive. Under the paradigmof regionalism, regional space in novels is not merely a conceptual index of socialattitudes and representational practice. It is reimagined as a texture, a style, anetiquette and an important metabolism that endows life into text. By exploring places,regional literature concerns about immigration, urbanization and culture transmission,probes into culture diversity excluded from national narration and region’srectification of identity in the process of accepting unified social values. In theoriginal model of identity defined in terms of race, class and gender, the attention toplace forms a new regional dimension. Literary regionalism’s emphasis on theparticularity of region has often authorized the less powerful of the society to speak.While taking itself as a complicated and interconnected literary category, regionalismsets up the relationship between the past and the present by actively involving into thedialogue with the old world. In virtue of the latest theories of new cultural geography, literary regionalism constitutes an interdisciplinary approach to the dialecticalrelationship between people and place, and the way that people shape the borderlineof their cultural identity in the chaotic environment and that the natural landscapeevolves over time as a result of human presence and influence. While globalization incontemporary world is eroding the security of space and individual identity, the morespecific, micro and plural regional concept defined under the paradigm of literaryregionalism substitutes the macro and uniform human existence and transcends thetraditional approaches of regional study, which make it a compensation and repellenceof cultural unification.On the basis of contemporary regional literature theories this study analyzed fiveregional writings of Willa Cather in different phases of her writing life from apluralistic, dialectic and dynamic perspective. In sorting out the developing tendencyof Cather’s poetics this study discussed her regional politics and explored the complexrelationships between her writing and region, trying to answer questions as how sheinterprets the dialectic relationships between people and place in her writing, how shepresents the social changes by taking region as the carrier and what is hercontemplation on the meaning and significance of region to individual identity andnational culture.Cather’s novels are bound up with regions. The conflicts and interplay appearedin human and place confrontations are the essential driving force of her writing. Incertain sense, her regional writings participate in the constant creation of region. Shekeeps discovering, challenging and broadening the definition of region to exceed thelimit of traditional concepts and demonstrates the dialogue and interactions betweendifferent regions. Endowed with spirits, Cather’s regions step from the background intraditional regional writings to the foreground and function on several levels in thenovels being examined. Place can be challenges the characters have to confront, orcatalyst completing the subjects’ identity, or source of miraculous power. It has anidentity the same as the character. Cather’s characters do not simply live ingeographical places; they live in places emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.Describing in detail the character’s life in one region or different regions, Catherexplores the constant complement and transformation of the character’s identities ininteractions with place and how people’s movement extends his life boundary. Variousforces in region work together on her characters which makes different regionalexperiences important factors affecting the development of their identities. They keepabsorbing inspirations for building their identities from old or modern regions, naturalor artificial landscapes, present or past regional feelings, successful or frustratedregional experiences, and in turn change the landscapes according to their ownunderstanding of the regions, leaving marks of human existence. These predominantlyillustrate the intimate relationship between people and place, and Cather’s socialawareness and thinking of human nature in the dialogues of the two.Cather’s region is complicated and mobile. It is also the setting of dominantsocial changes. In her narrative of the immigrants’ life immersed in tradition andabundant civilization, Cather extends her understanding of region to the national life of American society and contends that the migration of American among differentregions is another driving force of American society in addition to the utilization andpossession of land. Cather’s tracing of the European and American culture heritageindicates her perception of the complexity of regional cultural identity and explorationof the roots of American culture. Her acceptance of diverse cultures surpasses theself-referent mythology of nationalism and the dominance of Anglo-Saxon culture. Bymaintaining the particularity of region Cather preserves the diversity and everlastingof region. Cather creates a cosmopolitan region that resists isolation or insularity andis able to transcend the historical periods and the boundaries of nation to connect withthe world. Her understanding of regionalism challenges the narrow definition ofregion at her time when regional writing often signaled American literary nationalism.Willa Cather’s style is matchless in its clarity, beauty and simplicity. Her regionsare wrought in the most satisfactory prose style. Her constant experimentation inliterary technique breaks the stereotype that regional writing is lack of artisticinnovation. Her simplicity style disguises her willingness to experiment andimplement various modern literary techniques. By using vacuole and juxtaposition,she successfully evokes the reader’s speculation. The retreat of the author increasesthe interaction between the reader and the text. The ever shifting time line, indecisiveending and increasing fracture in structure form the complex framework of her novels,demonstrating her multiple narrative perspectives and capacity of modern processwith space.Cather’s regional novels are not simply nostalgia or repetition of the past butrather an exploration of the modern meaning of region and the inhabited regionalspace of human. Cather’s regionalism is rural as well as urban; independent as well asopen; placid as well as full of conflicts. Consequently, though rooted in region it canalso transcend the sphere of region thus change the conventional understanding of thesignificance and functions of region, and regional identity. What is presented in hernovels is a kind of more complicated and expanded regional culture awarenesssurpassing its fa ade. By doing so she secures her regional writing a world literature.The cultural traits, humanistic spirits conveyed in her regions and her accounts of thesocial movements and the nature of human existence inspire deeper contemplations onour modern social civilization.Willa Cather’s attachment and personal experience with the west, southwest andeast part of America help make her regional novels authentic and fascinating whichendows her novels a kind of special charm and entitles her the fame of excellentregional writer. Taking two of Cather’s prairie trilogy—O Pioneers! and My Antonia—as the research subjects, it can be found that via focusing on the first immigrants’displacement in the west Cather’s early writings present the influence of the OldWorld to the formation of subjects’ identities after being displaced illustrating theintimate connection between the American culture and old Europe. In the negotiationand interaction with regions the characters who once experienced loss of homeachieve harmonious co-existence with the land after understanding it. Cather’sdetailed descriptions of some particular landscapes demonstrate the frontiers’ conquest and utilization of the land as well as the interplay between people and land.Cather’s description of the experiences of losing home explores the differentrelationships with place that subjects may form under different conditions.In The Song of the Lark characters’ migration among various regions elaboratesCather’s construction of the connectivity between city and country. To Cather theexistence of region is definitely not insular but depends on its linkage with otherregions and their mutual support. In the dialogue between the urban and the rural thereimplies the driving force of American society. Similarly, the characters’ growth anddevelopment is also the result of their interaction with regions. Regions whichtranscend the boundaries of geography and time keep offering shelter, inspiration,materials or meaning for the characters’ building of identity. In this novel Catherextends the meaning of frontier to include the social changes in regional culture.Concerning the fusion of different regions from an open and dynamic perspective, sheembeds the development of society into her construction of region.The Professor’s House is the most significant novel in Cather’s medium term losttrilogy. In this novel Cather challenges the antinomy between regionalism andmodernism by enmeshing modern techniques into her regional novels. In herdescription of frustrated regional experiences, heterogeneous garden and theprofessor’s old attic study invested with multiple meanings, Cather explores thecharacter’s feeling of being lost while seeking for identity in the wild prairie ofmodern society. The indecisive ending, complicated structure and simple style areimplications of her daring experiment in modern techniques. This novel represents anew phase of Cather’s writing career.In Cather’s later novels, Death Comes for the Archbishop is a historical narrativetaking American southwest as the setting. This novel is an evidence of the variation ofCather’s writing as a result of Cather’s open and dynamic regional perception. Thetriumphant tone in her early novels returns with higher degree of maturity andproficiency. This writing denied categorization in terms of any literary genre andconcerns more upon people’s spiritual transcendence of geographical and genealogicalregion demonstrating Cather’s consciousness of the cosmopolitan value of literature.The dialogues between different regions convey the fusion and surpassing of inlandand outland. Land becomes the humanistic spiritual carrier of the co-existence andsolidarity of diverse cultures of the region. Moreover, this novel profoundly exploresthe American Indian spiritual world and their values from the perspective of a whitepriest. In the mutual examination and comparison of the two civilizations Catherappreciates the intimate relationship with nature in the Indian civilization andexpresses her perception that the admission of the Other culture with distinctivefeatures is the premise of healthy development of the new country.Willa Cather’s sense of region is open, dynamic and developing, and her nuancedunderstanding of region contributes to the construction of one after another literaryregional complexion. Her region is natural as well as human, open as well aspluralistic. It is the result of a fluid, dynamic interplay between generalities andspecificities. Taking region as the carrier Cather responds the changing of the society inspiring us to keep thinking about the meaning and significance of region from anever innovating perspective and to understand the complexities of theinter-connections between writing and place in a more supple, inflected and dialecticattitude. In present global age, re-examining Willa Cather of the turning of19thand20thcentury her eternal pursuit of art pulls her back from the margin of literarycriticism to the stage of classical literature. The cultural traits, humanistic spiritsconveyed in her regions and her accounts of the social movements and the nature ofhuman existence inspire deeper contemplations of our modern social civilization.