![]() ![]() The effects landscapes have on Cather’s characters can be understood as existing both in a wide range and in a nexus they are unique even as they converge. Cather’s connection to the land she was familiar with inspired observations of emotional significance, leading her to make artistic connections between her surroundings and the vistas of the human mind via her characters. ![]() Cather’s close relationship with the landscapes of her life-notably the American prairie, the landscape most often cited in discussions of her work-was a foundational influence for the landscapes she built, image by image, in her stories and novels. Rundstrom’s words aptly introduce the intersection of landscape and meaning that is apparent in Cather’s My Ántonia and The Professor’s House. Literary geographers examine an author’s conceptual sense of place to enhance understanding and to enrich readers’ geographies” (217). ![]() Authors use invented literary settings, the where of a story, to represent landscape symbolically. In her article, “Harvesting Willa Cather’s Literary Fields,” Beth Rundstrom discusses the humanistic outlook evident in most scholarship surrounding literary geography, as she writes, “Human-land relationships are the inspiration and impetus for invented landscapes…. ![]()
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