Willa Cather and Material Culture: Real-World Writing, Writing The Real World (Studies in American Literary Realism and Naturalism) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0817314369 ISBN 13: 9780817314361

Publisher: University Alabama Press, 2005

Synopsis

A compilation of essays focusing on the significance of material culture to Cather’s work and Cather scholarship.

Willa Cather and Material Culture is a collection of 11 new essays that tap into a recent and resurgent interest among Cather scholars in addressing her work and her career through the lens of cultural studies. One of the volume's primary purposes is to demonstrate the extent to which Cather did participate in her culture and to correct the commonplace view of her as a literary connoisseur set apart from her times.

The contributors explore both the objects among which Cather lived and the objects that appear in her writings, as well as the commercial constraints of the publishing industry in which her art was made and marketed. Essays address her relationship to quilts both personally and as symbols in her work; her contributions to domestic magazines such as Home Monthly and Woman's Home Companion; the problematic nature of Hollywood productions of her work; and her efforts and successes as a businesswoman. By establishing the centrality of material matters to her writing, these essays contribute to the reclaiming of Cather as a modernist and highlight the significance of material culture, in general, to the study of American literature.

 

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Willa Cather and Material Culture is a collection of 11 new essays that tap into a recent and resurgent interest among Cather scholars in addressing her work and her career through the lens of cultural studies. One of the volume's primary purposes is to correct the commonplace view of her as a literary connoisseur set apart from her times and to demonstrate the extent to which Cather did participate in her culture.

The contributors explore both the objects among which Cather lived and the objects that appear in her writings, as well as the commercial constraints of the publishing industry in which her art was made and marketed. Essays address her relationship to quilts both personally and as symbols in her work; her contributions to domestic magazines such asHome Monthly and Woman's Home Companion; the problematic nature of Hollywood productions of her work; and her efforts and successes as a businesswoman. By establishing the centrality of material matters to her writing, these essays contribute to the reclaiming of Cather as a modernist and highlight the significance of material culture, in general, to the study of American literature.

Janis P. Stout is the author of Katherine Anne Porter: A Sense of the Times; Through the Window, Out the Door: Women's Narratives of Departure, from Austin and Cather to Tyler, Morrison, and Didion; Willa Cather: The Writer and Her World;and A Calender of the Letters of Willa Cather.

From the Back Cover:

A compilation of essays focusing on the significance of material culture to Cather's work and Cather scholarship.

"This collection is significant for focusing attention upon the importance of material culture to Cather and to her writing. Beyond its significance to understanding Cather, the [book] provides a case study of the range of approaches to material culture in American literary studies."--Susan Rosowski, author of The Voyage Perilous: Willa Cather's Romanticism

CONTRIBUTORS: Jennifer Bradley, Park Bucker, Robert K. Miller, Mary Ann O'Farrell, Anne Raine, Ann Romines, Michael Schueth, Janis P. Stout, Honor McKitrick Wallace, Deborah Lindsay Williams, and Sarah Wilson

About this edition

• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0817314369
• ISBN 13: 9780817314361
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Stout Janis P.