Willa Cather and Aestheticism

Perhaps because they believe that Cather's relation to the aesthetic movement has been an underdeveloped area of scholarship, Watson (East Texas Baptist Univ.) and Moseley (emer., Texas A & M, Commerce) have gathered essays that link the writer to a wide range of literary and visual artists—from figures such as the British Oscar Wilde and William Pater and Americans Henry James and Henry Adams to the fin de siècle dandy; from the Barbizon school, the tonalists, and the Arts and Crafts movement to modernisms. …The most satisfying essays articulate how Cather enacts the central dichotomy within aestheticism: that between the exquisite object or momentary perception of beauty and the "real" world of time, material production, and consumer capitalism. Peter Betjemann, for instance, traces similarities between the death of the engineer in Alexander's Bridge and the uprising of the laboring Morlocks in H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, both of which enact a return of what is repressed in severing the aesthetic from the material. This volume provides the impetus for further explorations of the fascinating and vexing subject of Cather's aestheticism. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
A gorgeous, hard-bound book that lives up to its title, Willa Cather and Aesthecism is a pleasure to handle and to read. A glossy image of Lady Lilith painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti adorns the rich red-and-black cover. Inside, readers find a diverse yet cohesive grouping of essays on the subject of Willa Cather’s relationship to the Aesthetic Movement. This collection challenges commonly received assumptions about Cather’s artistic influences, revisiting well-known texts through a new lens and exploring more deeply many of Cather’s works that have received less critical attention. The authors engage a wide range of approaches, focusing on everything from painting to architecture to material objects in establishing their claims about Cather and aestheticism. ... Well worth adding to personal libraries for its aesthetic appeal as a lovely material object and a well-written, diverse collection of essays, Willa Cather and Aesthecisim is an important addition to Cather scholarly studies. As is expected in a compilation, researchers need to explore the assortment to find their specific interests, yet the organization and layout make these discoveries easy. For those interested in Cather and the idea of aestheticism, each essay is a gem—the entire book a finely jeweled setting. * Western American Literature *
This volume [Willa Cather and Aestheticism] is the first to explore Cather's relationship with the Aesthetic Movement. . . .The book provides important insights into Cather's relationship to the Aesthetic Movement and the visual arts. * American Literary Realism *
Watson and Moseley compile a volume that delivers on its promise to 'increase our understanding of Cather's aesthetic beliefs and practices and contribute immensely to our critical understanding of her work and her life. * Studies in American Naturalism *
The essays in the volume are consistently excellent. Willa Cather and Aestheticism represents a major addition to Cather scholarship.
That Willa Cather emerged in the 1890s as an artist during a time of aesthetic transition has long been acknowledged, seen as axiomatic. Romanticism giving way to Realism. Naturalism to Modernism. She was there, deeply engaged through her powerful and growing art. Yet Cather’s awareness of the Aesthetic movement of the late-nineteenth century—and her myriad debts to it—have not been detailed until Willa Cather and Aestheticism. Its essays, from the sharp introduction by the editors defining the contexts to John J. Murphy’s sustained meditation on Cather’s awareness of Henry Adams that closes the volume, detail Cather’s intellectual and imaginative influences with Aestheticism in wholly new ways. Showing Cather deeply engaged in the aesthetic developments of her day, these critics define a new array of influences drawn from painting, practice, and culture: they further clarify Cather’s profound genius in her shaping of European inheritances to the American story and so to its cultural mores. Willa Cather and Aestheticism defines a wholly new array of influences and engagements—it impressively shapes another Willa Cather, a new vision of the writer. -- Robert Thacker, St. Lawrence University