the novel says about Lily’s character, granting her a tremendous amount of agency, perhaps more than the novel allows. Like the rest of the book, in Chapter Four, Willa Cather’s My Ántonia shows the conflict between plot and the Emersonian hero, inquiring, “can the modern world accommodate the romantic Emersonian spirit?” (116). In Book 1, a young Jim Burden fulfills the Emersonian hero, but by Book 2, Jim interprets nature in terms of loss and naturalizes his interpretation (122): he acts like a realist who must reject romanticism. In contrast, Ántonia adapts as does Lena Lingard. Jim idealizes both female characters, treating them like muses while he “maintains his position as the realist, and justifies his own failure to locate the ideal within the real” (126). Polley claims that Jim represents what happens when “history becomes a scapegoat for personal failure, and spiritual loss becomes as natural as the image of the setting sun” (128). Cather embraces Ántonia and Lena, characters who make sacrifices and maintain their Emersonian individualism despite challenges. Cather is still a realist by demonstrating the difficulties of history, but unlike the other works in Polley’s book, Cather differs because she recognizes “the fiction within history itself” (133). In this way, My Ántonia “begins to locate a new emerging literary culture” (117). This is an incredibly valuable chapter in the way it moves Polley’s thesis forward, out of realism and towards modernism. The epilogue extends the thesis to the larger issue of periodization. Polley acknowledges the long-held debates over the issue, admitting that her critical work relies on periodization while criticizing it: “while Echoes of Emerson recognizes historical contrast as something of an ontological imperative (in American realism and beyond), it relies equally on a vision of history that resists discrete beginnings and ends” (136). Thus, Polley advocates a revision of periodization, a claim for all literary critics to consider, not just those who study American realism.

中文翻译：

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塞缪尔理查森在上下文编辑。作者：Peter Sabor 和 Betty A. Schellenberg

小说讲述了莉莉的性格，赋予了她巨大的代理权，也许比小说允许的更多。与本书的其余部分一样，在第四章中，威拉·凯瑟的《我的安东尼娅》展示了情节与爱默生英雄之间的冲突，并询问“现代世界能否容纳浪漫的爱默生精神？” (116)。在第 1 卷中，年轻的吉姆·伯登（Jim Burden）实现了爱默生式的英雄，但在第 2 卷中，吉姆从损失的角度解释了自然并将他的解释自然化（122）：他的行为就像一个必须拒绝浪漫主义的现实主义者。相比之下，Ántonia 和 Lena Lingard 一样适应。吉姆将这两个女性角色理想化，将她们视为缪斯女神，同时他“坚持自己作为现实主义者的立场，并为自己未能在现实中找到理想的位置辩解”（126）。波莉声称吉姆代表了当“历史成为个人失败的替罪羊，精神损失变得像落日一样自然”时发生的事情（128）。凯瑟拥抱安多尼亚和莉娜，他们尽管面临挑战，仍会做出牺牲并保持爱默生式的个人主义。通过展示历史的困难，凯瑟仍然是一个现实主义者，但与波莉书中的其他作品不同，凯瑟的不同之处在于她认识到“历史本身中的虚构”（133）。通过这种方式，我的 Ántonia “开始定位一种新兴的文学文化”（117）。这是一个非常有价值的章节，它将波利的论文从现实主义推向现代主义。结语将论文扩展到更大的周期问题。Polley 承认关于这个问题的长期辩论，承认她的批判性工作在批评它的同时依赖于分期：“虽然爱默生的回声承认历史对比是一种本体论命令（在美国现实主义和其他领域），但它同样依赖于一种抵制离散开始和结束的历史愿景”（ 136)。因此，波莉主张修正分期，这是所有文学评论家都应该考虑的主张，而不仅仅是那些研究美国现实主义的人。