... calls the ending ‘‘cynical denounces Nick for ‘‘deluded arrogance and reads the novel as a ‘‘highly ironic’’ portrayal of a society ‘‘truly empty and debased Why so many of Wharton’s characters inspire such divergent views is a subject worth exploring. ii Willa Cather a. Critical Books...

... deprived of cultural authority they become ghosts or automatons who keep the past and its traditional hierarchies alive. ii  Willa Cather a. Editions, Books, and Collections  A highlight of this year’s scholar- ship is the scholarly edition of Shadows on the Rock, ed. Susan J. Rosow­ ski (Nebraska...

... devoted to this novel. Neglected texts, especially those written after 1920, are also the focus of criticism. Comparative studies abound, with Wharton analyzed alongside writers ranging from Shakespeare to Willa Cather and other modernist writers to Anita Brookner and Candace Bushnell. The concern...

...Kim Vanderlaan; John Swift Copyright © 2022 Duke University Press 2022 [email protected] [email protected] 7 Wharton and Cather Kim Vanderlaan and John Swift The impressive volume of Edith Wharton and Willa Cather scholarship this year signals that both novelists have achieved...

... of work and range of topics covered in these articles, many of them comparative studies, demonstrate Wharton’s increasing centrality in American literature. The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, and the late novels receive focused attention. This year’s Willa Cather...

... articles and chapters in books. Almost all critics now place Edith Wharton and Willa Cather in historical contexts, showing how their aesthetic principles and their representations of social reality were shaped by their responses to defin- ing events and issues such as immigration, war, class conflict...

... Dormer) as the embodiment of ‘‘traditional American values’’ or of Charity as the target of Wharton’s attack on American anti-intellectualism and indif- ference to the fate of European civilization. ii Willa Cather a. Books and Essay Collections One of the most valuable contributions...

... request that Hardy revise his text to keep it in line with the magazine’s conservative tone. ii  Willa Cather Cather publications include one scholarly book, a collection of essays, a casebook, several volumes of reprinted material, and nearly 40 additional essays and notes. Various essays...

... work. The Willa Cather Newsletter and Review published two special issues that offer contrasting images of the author: the indigenous ecologist and the transatlantic sophisticate. Cather scholarship breathes more freely since the publication of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, ed. Andrew...

... in modernism, with strong defense of the relevance and quality of Wharton’s 1920s and 1930s novels. Theoretically sophisticated analyses employ approaches ranging from psychoanalysis and deconstruction to animal studies. Critical work on Willa Cather continues to reflect the transforma- tions...

... up new things. The fall 2011 issue American Literary Scholarship (2011) doi 10.1215/00659142-2144136 © 2013 by Duke University Press 128 Wharton and Cather of the Willa Cather Newsletter and Review, for instance, contains an essay describing and analyzing...

... view, ensured racial progress and social stability at the price of women’s freedom. ii Willa Cather a. Critical Books A welcome resource for scholars, Willa Cather: The Contemporary Reviews, ed. Margaret Anne O’Connor (Cambridge), sam- ples the response in English-language newspapers...

... society parallel those in Wharton’s Old New York. Singley concludes that Wharton’s female love story is “alive and well,” adapted in Minot’s more frank portrayals of love, lust, and social expectation. ii  Willa Cather a. Books and Editions  Highlights of this year’s scholarship are out...

.... a. Criticism: General Essays The Willa Cather Newsletter and Review (formerly the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial Newsletter and Review) has long been a mainstay of Cather studies. In recent years this small but important publication has been joined by the newsletter of the Cather Colloquium...

..., Patrick Mullen a psychological one. Nick Bromell, Ann Pat- ten, Griffith, and Jenny Wahl examine economics, politics, and social practices and theories of democracy. Willa Cather scholarship this year continued to offer work drawn from the study of new materials: archival, textual, and contextual...

... dominates the current crop of Willa Cather criticism, with two essay collections (one from France published last year), a special journal issue, and other studies devoted to that 1918 novel. Approaches to My Ántonia are varied as expected, including more than one essay apiece addressing translation...

... of imagination, and that the paranormal plays a large role in our daily lives.” ii  Willa Cather a. On the Divide  The lone book on Cather to appear this year, David Porter’s On the Divide: The Many Lives of Willa Cather (Nebraska), is something of a tour de force in its use of—and reprinting of—many...

..., with critics noting Wharton’s modernism and challenging the notion that she lost touch with America during the 1930s. Comparative articles discuss Wharton and writers such as Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Willa Cather, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Diane Johnson, and Virginia Woolf. A special...

..., marked by Joyce McDonald s book The Stu of Our Forebears: Willa Cather s Southern Heritage. Critics of both Wharton and Cather are increasingly preoc- cupied with analyzing the ambivalence or the conflicting attitudes that they see in the novelists portrayal of characters in multiracial, class-based...

...Kim Vanderlaan; John N. Swift Copyright © 2021 Duke University Press 2021 Wharton and Cather Kim Vanderlaan and John N. Swift As readers of the scholarship on Edith Wharton and Willa Cather published in , we have been struck by its continuing maturation and the encouragement of and reliance...