XXI Congreso Internacional sobre Sostenibilidad Ambiental, Cultural, Econ?mica y Social

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, US intellectuals including Van Wyck Brooks, Randolph Bourne, and Waldo Frank believed that Americans had lost their connection to place and to ethnic traditions and were becoming an aimless, half formed, people without a usable past or a native artistic tradition to define them. In “America’s Coming of Age” (1914), Brooks argues that America needs a great artist with lived experiences who can proclaim the American character. Many modernist artists concurred, arguing that they need to break from European and classical models and “find a source in America for what we think and do” (William Carlos Williams). This paper examines a novel that seeks to answer this lament in fiction. This bildungsroman depicts the formation of an artist born in the American west, overcoming social obstacles and ultimately succeeding on the stage in New York. It is not entirely surprising that this novel, The Song of the Lark (1915) was written by the American author Willa Cather, who moved in the same circles as many of these thinkers. What is surprising, however, is that The Song of the Lark depicts a woman as the artistic source and national hero in the text. This novel emplots the artistic development of Thea Kronberg alongside the development of the American nation in historical time and also explores the asynchronic moments, “cosmopolitan remainders” (Tobais Boes), that subvert the temporal and geographical structures of the novel and open new spaces in the American narrative.