Study Guide for My Antonia

The second text for discussion in "The Great Plains from Texas to Saskatchewan" is My Antonia, by Willa Cather. My first reason for including this work in the program for the seminar is my unabashed admiration for the women in Cather's Nebraska novels—both Alexandra and Antonia, markedly different heroines, but both wonderfully appealing to me and, I gather, to countless other readers.

Another reason is that I really like Red Cloud, the town that is the historical basis for Black Hawk in fiction. I like to eat and drink at the Palace, just around the corner off Main, and walk around to Cather sites. On my last walk about Red Cloud I had a digital camera in my pocket, so in seminar I'll be showing a few slides of the town.

A third reason for reading Cather is that she doesn't classify easily. She's not purely of one literary era or another, and she's certainly not midwestern, which confuses some critics. I think her Nebraska novels are honest, but layered evocations of the plains, irrespective of literary trends, and I think Antonia is the greatest novel in all of Great Plains literature.

I'm fascinated by the many arcane references to nature, plants, animals, and folklife in Antonia. These show that Cather knows the country; I'm often uncertain whether she includes these details simply from affection for them, or whether she means something by them, or whether they just mean something inadvertently. Which ones do you notice, and are there any that are puzzling? I've begun an annotated list of Prairie Details from My Antonia.

Texts of Antonia
Text	Description
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918	The original text, elegant in design. NDSU Libraries happens to hold a copy.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994	Volume in the Willa Cather Scholarly Edition series, setting a high standard for reference.
Paper, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997	Bison Book edition derived from the scholarly edition; includes the excellent historical essay. This text will be our standard reference for the seminar.

Exploring My Antonia

Our first-day discussion of the work, our initial exploration, will be based on the commonplace entries, marginalia, and curiosities of all of us, with designated discussion leaders facilitating the flow. Here are some comments and questions I might put into the mix.

· Beginning with the main thing—what about Antonia? Who is she, and what is she like? It is useful, I think, to separate out what seem to be facts about Antonia and what may be perceptions of her or projections on her. What are the facts? And who filters the facts to us?

· What is the image of the prairie landscape we get from Antonia? What is the geography of this prairie setting? What is the lay of the land, the vegetation, the wildlife?

· What is the image of small-town life we get from the work? What is this town like, physically and socially? How do different people respond to it--who thrives, and who languishes?

· Cather is particularly attentive to European immigrants in her world. What immigrant groups are present? How do they compare?

· Right down to the late 20th century critics kept complaining about the structure of My Antonia, or rather the lack of it—they thought it was not a proper novel. Where does the structure of the work come from? What do you think of it?

· In a number of places we find stories as set pieces within the larger narrative of Antonia—that is, someone in the story proceeds to tell a story. Who are the story-tellers embedded in the narrative? Why are they chosen to tell the stories they do? What is the effect of these embedded narratives?

Enlightening My Antonia: (Suggested) Reports
Subject	Sources
Recall Webb's dichotomy of Great Plains literature. Does Antonia fit? To what genre or era of literature does it belong?	Webb, Great Plains Rosowski, Voyage Perilous Murphy, "Nebraska Naturalism" Acocella, "Cather and the Academy"
Cather's biographers--what can each of them teach us? And what would Cather think of her treatment at their hands?	O'Brien, Willa Cather Woodress, Willa Cather
Consider the embedded narratives in Antonia--the stories told (as alluded to in a question above). This might make a good group report--cataloging the narratives and the narrators, then taking up certain stories in depth (such as the wolf story, or the Coronado story).	Bolton, Coronado Schach, "Russian Wolves in Folktales and Literature of the Plains"
(Similar question as for Webb) Regionalism was a growing phenomenon at the time Cather published My Antonia. Who were the regionalists, and what were they trying to do? What was the Great Plains conception of regionalism? Where does Cather fit into this intellectual scheme?	Dorman, Revolt of the Provinces Luebke, "Regionalism and the Great Plains" Isern, "Nowhere Spelled Backwards" Isern, "Thorfinnson Rides Again"
Was Cather a post-colonial writer?	Ashcroft et al, The Empire Writes Back Said, Culture and Imperialism Isern, "The Comedy of the Commons"
European immigrant ethnicity is an important theme in Antonia. (This is in stark contrast to Webb.) How important was ethnic colonization in the formation of regional society? How sound were Cather’s understandings of ethnic cultures and their interactions?	Luebke, “Ethnic Group Settlement of the Great Plains” Sherman et al, Plains Folk: North Dakota’s Ethnic History Sherman et al, Prairie Mosaic Many works in the Institute for Regional Studies treating local communities and regional cultural groups
Social class and rural-urban relationships are prominent elements in Antonia. How well did Cather represent rural and country-town society and social relationships?	Danbom, The Resisted Revolution Stock, Nelson, After the West Was Won Voisey, Vulcan County and community histories in the Institute collection
Extending My Antonia: (Suggested) Reports
Subject	Sources
Cather's position in relation to Red Cloud is an influential case study in the relationship between the artist (she was so self-consciously an artist) and the old home town on the plains. Do others, later, occupy the same position?	Stegner, Wolf Willow McMurtry, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen Norris, Dakota
Antonia is the one text of our four that has been the subject of considerable literary criticism. Can you trace the course of literary thought about Cather downstream? Can you account for its currents?	Acocella, "Cather and the Academy" Other works, as listed in selected bibliography
What ever happened to Red Cloud (Black Hawk in the novel)? What became of country towns such as the one Cather grew up in? And how were they portrayed by subsequent authors?	Nelson, After the West Was Won and The Prairie Winnows Out Its Own Kraenzel, The Great Plains in Transition Research a community in local histories (at the Institute) and by personal visit

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