The Inheritance And Development Of Transcendentalism, Romanticism And Local Colorism

Willa Cather (1873—1947) is one of the most famous women writers in the first half of the 20th century in the American literary history. Using touches with deep feeling as well as graceful and poetic techniques, she portrays from different angles the indomitable and tenacious pioneering spirit as well as the noble morality of the pioneers in the Mid-west America at the end of the 19th century. Some critics grand her equal status to Henry James, Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner and other most outstanding American novelists; some even praise her as "the greatest woman writer since the founding of the United States."O Pioneers!. is the starting point and representative work of Cather's "Pioneering Literature" (or "Frontier Prose", or "Nebraska Prairie Fiction"). Up to now, domestic studies and reviews on this novel have laid particular emphasis on three aspects: theme, writing technique and style, still lagging behind overseas scholars' achievements of research. Reviews concerning "theme" mainly focus on the depiction of pioneering female characters in this frontier novel. Among the reviews about "writing technique" are her employment of double narrative points of view, juxtaposition of different life experiences and time as well as contrast of details, etc.. And articles pertinent to "style" stress the artistic features of this novel.After careful reading, comparison and detailed analysis of relevant important text including Cather's novel O Pioneers?, Emerson's essays Self-Reliance and Nature, Whitman's poems Pioneers? O Pioneers! and Song of Myself, Jewett's novella The Country of the Pointed Firs as well as her short story A White Heron, the author of the present thesis finds that Emerson, Whitman and Jewett all have a significant impact upon the literary creation of Cather, who formulates a kind of unique "Pioneering Literature" with distinguished characteristics. In other words, Cather not only inherits and integrates the essence of Ralph Waldo Emerson's Transcendentalism, Walt Whitman's romanticism and Sarah Orne Jewett's local colorism, but also transforms and develops their literary theory and practice further ahead.Transcendentalism is a popular philosophical tendency among writers in and around Boston in the mid-19th century. Its main features can be summarized as follows: emphasizing Spirit or the Oversoul as the most important thing in the universe, thinking highly of the individual as the most important element of society, offering a fresh perception of nature as symbolic of the Spirit filling with God's overwhelming presence, and advocating "wisdom of intuition" which means that all the truth could be obtained only by means of man's intuition. All these four major features are implicit in the novel O Pioneers!, so it can be seen that Emerson's Transcendentalist theories are one of the most important sources of Cather's unique "Frontier Prose".While adopting the themes of Whitman's poetry and borrowing her novel's title "O Pioneers!" from Whitman's poem Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Cather radically revises the vision of pioneering and settlement Whitman advances in Pioneers! O Pioneers!. Then a comparison between Cather and Whitman in terms of their literary creation is made. By looking at the list of several similarities and major differences, a conclusion is drawn that Cather both inherits and transforms Whitman's romantic traditions, which are then integrated into "Nebraska Prairie Fiction" initiated by Cather.The influence of Jewett on Cather is evidenced by Cather's novel O Pioneers! and Jewett's novella The Country of the Pointed Firs, both of which deal with the mother-daughter relationship. Cather publicly acknowledged the influence of Jewett on her novel when she dedicated O Pioneers! to her literary precursor and encouraging friend. They follow the same principle that the thing which has teased the mind for years is the proper material for serious literature. What's more, strong parallels exist between O Pioneers! and A White Heron, a short story by Jewett: their heroines share the same respectful bond with the natural world. But on the other hand, going beyond Jewett's sketches to write her first successful "long story", giving her novel a title that does not limit it to a region, and in intertwining "The White Mulberry Tree" with O Pioneers!, Cather includes disturbing subjects that generally did not find their way into Jewett's Maine pastorals: passion, violence, death. This study shows that Jewett's local colorism, after being inherited and developed, constitutes another major characteristic of Cather's original frontier prose other than Emerson's Transcendentalism and Whitman's romanticism.To sum up, such an extensive and systematic study in this paper will shed light upon our understanding not only of the evolving process of the author's literary creation but also of her prominent role and significant contributions.