A Study Of Community In Willa Cather’s Historical Ficitons

Willa Cather is a renowned novelist in the 20th century.Her early autobiographical novels,the“Prairie Trilogy”,which authentically reflect the lives of the pioneers in the American borderlands,have won her praises and made her a representative writer in the pioneering spirit of the American West.However,much attention focused on the“Prairie Trilogy”makes scholars and critics ignore her later novels,which narrate the lives beyond the American West and manifest that Cather’s writing is not restricted to the area of the American West and has a broader regional space.Classified as her historical fictions,Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock are set in the 19^thNew Mexico and the 17^thcentury French colonized Canada.The settings of the two novels have signified a broader dimension in time and space in Cather’s novels.The thesis discovers that although compared to the“Prairie Trilogy”,Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock have not attracted much attention,Cather’s thoughts on the construction of a multiracial and multicultural community implicated in the novels have significant values not only to the first half of the 20^thcentury USA inflicted with identity crisis,but also to the construction of community of shared future for mankind in the age of globalization nowadays.Therefore,this thesis attempts to explore how Cather has imagined and considered the construction of community through literary writing under the guidance of Community theory.Both Death Comes for the Archbishop and Shadows on the Rock tell the story of Frenchmen who travel to the wild places in the 19th century American Southwest and the 17^thcentury French Canada and live with the local inhabitants.Meanwhile,both novels represent how the European colonists built a new community in the New World.The thesis thinks these two novels display the difficulties and problems the colonists meet during constructing a new community,which is integrated with Cather’s imagination of the construction of community of spirit that goes beyond the limitation of community by blood and community of place,and reflect Cather’s positive attitudes toward the construction of a multiracial and multicultural community.The thesis,based on the theoretical frame of the Community,interprets the community writing in Cather’s historical fictions from three basic types of community:community by blood,community of place and community of spirit.Like most social theorists,Cather has revealed that a harmonious community is constructed by the interaction of the three layers of community.But instead of putting community by blood and community of place as the primary element of community like most theorists,Cather treats the community of spirit as the core element of the community.By studying the community writing in Cather’s two historical fictions.This thesis hopes to offer some illuminations to the construction of community of shared future for mankind that China advocates today.