The Professor's House (Willa Cather Scholarly Edition)

About this book

The scholarly edition of The Professors House incorporates into its textual analysis findings from a recently discovered and significantly reworked draft of the novel. Willa Cathers perennial claims that there were no extant drafts make this discovery especially important to Cather scholars. Written in 1925 when she was fifty-two years old The Professors House was Cathers seventh novel. Cather explained that in this novel she had attempted two structural experiments. The first experiment she took from the practice of early French and Spanish novelists of inserting a "nouvelle into the roman " hence the first-person "Tom Outlands Story" wedged between the other two parts of the novel. Second she compared the novels structure to a sonata form in music with the center section in significant contrast to the surrounding sections Behind the understated prose relating the story of Professor Godfrey St. Peter who despite his success experiences at midcareer a profound disappointment with life is the fierce account of how he decides to continue living despite those disappointments. Tom Outlands thrilling tale of a long-lost civilization is both an ironic contrast to the professors staid outer life and a mirror of the imaginative interior life he experiences in his attic study.