Carnival in the Novels of Willa Cather: When the World Becomes Grotesque
Author: | Chinery, Mary C. |
Year: | 2011 |
Pages: | 184 |
ISBN: | 0-7734-1550-5 978-0-07734-1550-8 |
Price: | $159.95 |
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Nominated for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association 2012 Emily Toth Award.
This work analyzes Willa Cather’s fiction using images of laughter, feasting and dancing. The study employs Bakhtin’s theory of the carnival and demonstrates that for Cather, festivals are transformative events.
Reviews
“This study foregrounds material usually so back grounded that its significance has not been noticed. Her writing is so intelligent, her thoughts so clear that it is difficult to imagine how this element of Cather’s craft has hitherto gone unstudied.”-Prof. Margaret Doane, California State University
"This work is a significant addition to Cather studies in its exploration of what Cather knew and understood about the carnival tradition in European classical literature and in the experiences of celebration in her own life.”-Prof. Dr. Laura Winters, College of Saint Elizabeth
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Foreword by Margaret Doane, Ph.D.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One
Dancing in Willa Cather’s Early Short Fiction
Chapter Two
Festivity and Midsummer Traditions in O Pioneers!
Chapter Three
The Hired Girls and the Dancing Pavilions in My Ántonia
Chapter Four
Failed Festivities: Parties in Modern Life
Chapter Five
Cather’s American Revision of Maid Marian in A Lost Lady
Chapter Six
Turning Worlds and the Laughter of December in My Mortal Enemy
Chapter Seven
Upsetting the Carnival in Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chapter Eight
Sacred Time and Festive Tradition in Shadows on the Rock
Chapter Nine
The End of the Festival in Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index