Reviewed by:

• Willa Cather and the Arts ed. by Guy J. Reynolds
• Holly Blackford

This twelfth volume of Cather Studies continues an active conversation in Cather scholarship about the writer’s engagement with artistic traditions, such as painting and opera. One solid strength of this particular collection, however, is its expansive definition of the arts in Cather’s work—inclusive of both traditional arts like painting and music as well as domestic arts, Black vernacular in poetry, illustrations, and consumer objects. The essays vary in innovation and quality, making the collection slightly uneven. Those on cooking and orchards, along with the final essay on marketing Cather, are weaker and less illuminating than the ones on home décor, vernacular in poetry, female singers on stage, the Benda illustrations, collections of paintings in Pittsburgh, and Epicurean texts influencing Cather.

The collection’s second solid strength is how its focus on the arts in the broadest sense positions Cather as embedded in both nineteenth-century and modern contexts. This is especially true in [End Page 291] James Jaap’s essay on Pittsburgh’s shifting culture of museums in the midst of industry, used to inform “Paul’s Case”; Diane Prenatt’s essay on imported French objects in Shadows on the Rock, which provides an exemplary method of interpretation and research; and Joyce Kessler’s close interrogation of woodcutting, nostalgia, and the Benda illustrations in My Ántonia.

Another element of note is the edition’s variety of approaches and topics, keeping it refreshing and far from repetitive. Strictly speaking, the collection is more a journal than a book per se, explaining some of the relatively shorter essays and the introduction. Cather Studies is a regular series that organizes Cather’s work into various discussions, helping scholars to consider Cather’s oeuvre in myriad ways. Reading a volume of Cather Studies, you feel less like opening a comprehensive and focused study and more like being launched into the midst of an active discussion among devoted Cather scholars. Future editors might want to consider the interests of a more general audience.

The collection’s strongest essays are by Diane Prenatt, Janis Stout, Sarah Young, Joyce Kessler, James Jaap, and Matthew Hokum. Prenatt interprets native and imported objects in Shadows on the Rock to interrogate boundaries of what is and is not considered art, opening up issues of what and how new world representations become established high culture for décor. Janis Stout demonstrates that Sterling A. Brown’s use of the vernacular in his poetry underscores Cather’s growing interest in Black speech, manifested in Sapphira and the Slave Girl. Young’s essay investigates the artistic method of opera and the career of Olive Fremstad to mark Cather’s use of the singer in The Song of the Lark. Kessler manages close reading and historical background on woodcutting and Benda to argue convincingly that My Ántonia’s illustrations are skewed to represent the perspective of Jim Burden. Jaap’s well-researched essay on industry and art collections and museums in Pittsburgh balances historical research with analysis of the environment surrounding Paul in “Paul’s Case,” making specific the general aura of aestheticism Paul enjoyed. Hokum’s unique essay showing the roots of Epicureanism and Epicure texts in Cather’s [End Page 292] work made me rethink the Platonic philosophy I’ve often equated with Cather. Hokum shifted my understanding of the professor in The Professor’s House to something completely unexpected— desirably free rather than hopelessly suicidal. Also noteworthy is the collapse of high and low art reflected in John Flannigan’s essay on music in Lucy Gayheart. I feel the convergence of high and lower arts does indeed seem to be part of this collection’s purpose, and I applaud the newer approach to “the arts” as a pluralistic set of performances, practices, and objects in the home.

审核人：

• 威拉·凯瑟和艺术编辑。由盖伊·雷诺兹（Guy J.Reynolds）
• 冬青布莱克福德

《凯瑟研究》第十二册继续在凯瑟奖学金中积极探讨有关作家对绘画和歌剧等艺术传统的参与。然而，这一特殊收藏的一个强大优势是它在凯瑟作品中对艺术的广泛定义-包括绘画和音乐等传统艺术以及家庭艺术，诗歌中的黑话，插图和消费品。论文的创新性和质量各不相同，使馆藏略有不平衡。在烹饪和果园上的那些，以及在市场上营销凯瑟琳的最后一篇文章中，比起家庭装饰，诗歌中的白话，舞台上的女歌手，本达插图，匹兹堡的绘画作品集以及影响伊壁鸠鲁的文字，这些要弱得多，并且缺乏启发性。凯瑟

该系列的第二个坚实优势在于，它如何集中于最广泛的意义上的艺术地位，使凯瑟·凯瑟（Cather）融入了19世纪和现代环境。在[End Page 291]詹姆斯·贾普（James Jaap）关于匹兹堡工业中的博物馆文化转变的文章中，尤其如此，该文章曾被称为“保罗案”。黛安·普雷纳特（Diane Prenatt）的论文《进口的法国物体在岩石上的阴影》中提供了一种典范的解释和研究方法；和乔伊斯·凯斯勒（Joyce Kessler）对《我的安东尼奥》中的木刻，怀旧和Benda插图的严密审讯。

另一个要注意的因素是该版本的方法和主题多种多样，使其保持新鲜感，并且没有重复性。严格来说，馆藏本身不是一本期刊，而是一本书，解释了一些相对较短的论文和引言。《凯瑟研究》是一个定期丛书，将凯瑟的作品分为各种讨论，以帮助学者们以多种方式考虑凯瑟的作品。读了大量的《凯瑟研究》后，您感觉不像是进行全面而集中的研究，而像是被投入到凯瑟研究者之间的积极讨论之中。未来的编辑可能会考虑更多读者的利益。

该系列最出色的论文来自黛安·普雷纳特（Diane Prenatt），贾尼斯·斯托特（Janis Stout），莎拉·杨（Sarah Young），乔伊斯·凯斯勒（Joyce Kessler），詹姆斯·贾普（James Jaap）和马修·霍克姆（Matthew Hokum）。Prenatt解释了《岩石上的阴影》中的原始和进口对象，以探询什么是和不被认为是艺术的界限，提出了关于什么以及如何以新的世界表示形式成为装饰艺术的高尚文化的问题。贾尼斯·斯托特（Janis Stout）证明，斯特林·布朗（Sterling A. Brown）在其诗歌中对白话语的使用强调了凯瑟对黑人言论的兴趣日益浓厚，这体现在《萨菲拉》和《奴隶女孩》中。Young的文章探讨了歌剧的艺术方法和Olive Fremstad的职业生涯，以纪念Cather在《百灵歌》中对歌手的使用。。凯斯勒（Kessler）对木刻和本达（Benda）进行了细致的阅读和历史背景，令人信服地指出，“我的安东尼奥（MyÁntonia） ”的插图偏向于代表吉姆·伯登（Jim Burden）的观点。贾普（Jaap）对匹兹堡工业和艺术收藏品及博物馆的研究颇为透彻，在历史研究与“保罗案”中对保罗周围环境的分析之间取得了平衡，具体说明了保罗所享有的审美唯美主义的普遍光环。霍克姆（Hokum）独特的论文展示了凯瑟（Cather）[End Page 292]中的伊壁鸠鲁主义和史诗般的文本的根源，这使我重新思考了经常与凯瑟等同的柏拉图哲学。霍库姆改变了我对教授之家教授的理解到完全出乎意料的事情-理想的是自由而不是绝望的自杀。同样值得注意的是，约翰·弗兰尼根（John Flannigan）在《露西·盖哈特（Lucy Gayheart）》中的音乐论文中反映出高低艺术的崩溃。我觉得高低级艺术的融合确实确实是该系列作品的目的之一，我赞扬将“艺术”作为一种表演，实践和家居中的多元化集合而采用的新方法。