Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

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Résumé :
The narrative is based on two historical figures of the late 19th century, Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf, and rather than any one singular plot, is the stylized re-telling of their lives serving as Roman Catholic clergy in New Mexico. The narrative has frequent digressions, either in terms of stories related to the pair (including the story of the Our Lady of Guadalupe and the murder of an oppressive Spanish priest at Acoma Pueblo) or through their recollections. The narration is in third-person omniscient style. Cather includes many fictionalized accounts of actual historical figures, including Kit Carson, Manuel Antonio Chaves and Pope Gregory XVI. In the prologue, Bishop Ferrand, an Irish bishop who works in the New World, solicits three cardinals at Rome to pick his candidate for the newly created diocese of New Mexico (which has recently passed into American hands). Bishop Ferrand is successful in getting his candidate, the Auvergnat Jean-Marie Latour, recommended by the cardinals over the recommendation of the Bishop of Durango (under whose territory New Mexico had previously fallen). One of the cardinals, a Spaniard named Allende, alludes to a painting by El Greco taken from his family by a missionary to the New World and lost, and asks for the new Bishop to search for it.

Biographie:
Willa Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 - April 24, 1947) was an American writer who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My ?ntonia (1918). In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I. While Cather enjoyed the novels of George Eliot, the Bront?s, and Jane Austen, she regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental and mawkish. Cather admired Henry James as a mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives. She generally preferred past literary masters to contemporary writers. Some particular favorites were Dickens, Thackeray, Emerson, Hawthorne, Balzac, Flaubert, and Tolstoy. Although Cather began her writing career as a journalist, she made a distinction between journalism, which she saw as being primarily informative, and literature, which she saw as an art form. Cather's work is often marked by its nostalgic tone, her subject matter and themes drawn from memories of her early years on the American plains. Cather graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She lived and worked in Pittsburgh for ten years, supporting herself as a magazine editor and high school English teacher. At the age of 33 she moved to New York City, her primary home for the rest of her life, though she also traveled widely and spent considerable time at her summer residence on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick.

Sommaire:
Born in 1873 in Gore, Virginia, Willa Cather moved to Nebraska at age nine, an experience that shaped her literary voice. Surrounded by immigrant settlers, she found inspiration in their resilience and the stark prairie landscape. This early exposure to frontier life became the foundation of her celebrated narratives.After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, Cather worked in journalism and teaching while honing her craft. Her time at McClure's Magazine in New York helped refine her storytelling and transition into fiction. During this period, she began exploring themes of pioneer life and the human spirit.Cather gained acclaim with O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My ?ntonia (1918), which captured frontier struggles and triumphs. In 1923, she won the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, set during World War I. Through evocative prose and rich character studies, she became a defining voice in American literature....