Willa Cather's My Ántonia
(Book)

The first and only collection of essays on My Antonia (1918), this volume in the ``Modern Critical Interpretations'' series reprints discussions of the novel by 12 critics, including David Daiches, Wallace Stegner, James E. Miller Jr., Dorothy VanGhent, Robert Scholes, and Terence Martin. The essays, illustrating a variety of critical approaches, deal with many aspects of the novel-its structure, themes, imagery, mythic elements, treatment of time and history, the role and character of the narrator, Jim Burden, and the relation of My Antonia to Willa Cather's other works. Drawn from the scholarship of the past 35 years, the essays strikingly illustrate the shifting perspectives in American criticism. The central assumptions of earlier critics who read the novel as a celebration of frontier life, and saw Antonia as the embodiment of triumphant vitality, are called into question in Blanche Gelfant's detailed analysis of sexuality in My Antonia and Deborah Lambert's persuasive feminist reading of the novel. The essays vary in depth of insight and originality but all are worthwhile, free of jargon, and accessible to the general reader. The documentation in the essays has been omitted, but the two-page bibliography directs readers to other sources. All the essays, including Harold Bloom's introduction, have been previously published. The collection will be useful to teachers and students of My Antonia. Useful for undergraduate, graduate, and community college students.-E. Nettels, College of William and Mary