Disturbing the Ecological Pastoral: An Examination of Willa Cather's Fictional Spaces in <em>My Ántonia</em> and <em>Death Comes for the Archbishop</em>

Willa Cather is universally lauded for her ability to render landscape into prose. Critics have observed for years that the landscape often functions as the main character in her fiction, or that her characters can easily be evaluated in terms of how deep and successful their relationships to the land are. In an attempt to evaluate Cather’s treatment of two different “Western” landscapes, I will focus first on <em>My Ántonia</em>, one of her most famous Nebraska novels, and second on <em>Death Comes for the Archbishop</em>, whose narrative unravels on the New Mexican landscape. I argue that Cather treats these spaces differently. In <em>My Ántonia</em>, she maps a horizontal space and a land that is shallow, with little room to acknowledge the Native American history that existed in Nebraska before the characters in her novel arrived. In <em>Death Comes for the Archbishop</em>, she writes a vertical space that allows a greater degree of visibility of all that is naturally inherent in the land. Throughout both novels, I track a phenomenon that I call the ecogothic, which serves to disturb and unsettle the pastoral and romantic expositions of the land that Cather is known for. These disturbances make us aware of a diverse and oftentimes troubling history in both spaces.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A. in English

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2019

Author dc:creator

• Stowe, Anne Carter

Contributors dc:contributor

• Annette Trefzer
• Jaime L. Harker
• Kathryn McKee

• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Ecogothic
• Ecopastoral
• My Ántonia
• Space
• Willa Cather
• English Language and Literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1571

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-2570