The Pioneer Of American National Literature-Willa Cather

Willa Cather is the American writer of the early 20^thcentury.Different from Edward Fitzgerald,William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway,Cather is deeply rooted in the soil of the Western America and devotes herself to carrying forward the precious cultural traditions.She takes pioneers as the heroine of her fiction,highly praising their tough, fearless spirit.In her magnum pous O,Pioneers!,My Antonia and A Lost Lady,Cather vividly describes the immigrants from the east of Europe,how to fight for survival,how to balance between old culture and new environment.In this thesis,I have tried my best to put Cather's fiction into the context of the American national literature,intended to comprehend how her fiction influence the fashion of American ethical image,and how her fiction record the building of the U.S. mainland tradition.