Fruit Trees and Tamarisk Brooms: Grafting a Unique Perspective of American History in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop

摘要

Willa Cather reveals an obsession with both personal and social history in 'Death Comes for the Archbishop.' She sees the recounting of history, to use Herbert Butterfield's words, as a creative act of translation. Cather challenges received notions of the past, which she sees as being as flawed as memory itself, by writing a revisionist version of American history in this novel. Employing the unique metaphor of grafting fruit trees, Cather produces new varieties of Americans in 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' that highlight her unique perspective on the formation of America. The unusual viewpoint Cather gives the history of the New Mexico territory provides a new historical framework with which to explore her fiction.