【作者】 孙晓青；

【导师】 吕长发；

【作者基本信息】 河南大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2008， 博士

【摘要】 印象主义是从最初的一个法国绘画流派逐渐发展起来的影响到整个欧洲文艺思潮的艺术流派。印象主义画家们的创作有着极其鲜明的艺术特征:他们以光和色作为认识世界的中心,再现个人瞬间视觉印象,强调绘画的审美功能,而后印象主义重视个体主观感受,追求主观世界的表现,这些特征给文学创作带来了深远的启示和影响。文学印象主义的主要表征是:以主观化、情绪化的心灵观照世界,着力映现处于某种状态下的感觉对外界光、色等的直觉,营造一种印象式的、情绪化的主观氛围,通过各种片断和印象的串联组合,达到主体与客体的融合,使表层显示出深度,以片断暗示出整体,从而通过这种有意味的形式达到一种超越印象之外的有机结构和主题核心。薇拉·凯瑟(1873-1947)是美国著名小说家之一,曾于1923年获普利策文学奖。她的许多作品一经出版即成为畅销书,以其独特的艺术魅力吸引着众多的读者和评论家,成为人们历久不衰的研究课题。然而迄今为止,除了国外几篇评述凯瑟作品中有关印象主义式的运用色彩的文章外,没有人尝试用文学印象主义特别是用文学印象主义的主体意识来系统地评述凯瑟的创作。这一现象激发了本文作者探究凯瑟作品“印象美”源渊的想法,产生了一项研究蕴含于凯瑟作品中文学印象主义及美学追求的新课题。鉴于凯瑟创作中的文学印象主义的特点,本文将运用有关文学印象主义理论来分析凯瑟的小说理论及创作。在这种方法观照之下重读凯瑟的创作理论及作品,不仅能使我们以全新的视角走进凯瑟作品的背景、内容、形式和语言运用,还能使我们进一步理解凯瑟创作的丰富性。我们认为凯瑟其实并不完全是一位追求多彩多姿、充满激情的浪漫主义作家,也不是一位纯粹写实的现实主义作家,用文学印象主义可以更好阐释凯瑟的艺术追求,全面理解其创作风格。论文选用凯瑟的四部作品——《啊,拓荒者!》、《我的安东妮亚》、《一个迷途的女人》及《教授的住宅》进行分析,因为这几部作品是凯瑟的成名小说,既包括凯瑟“找到自己声音”的开始,又包括了凯瑟独特写作风格的最高成就,从中可看出凯瑟的创作特点。凯瑟以一凭窗而立的守望者的姿态,在对拓荒精神的讴歌中寄托自己的理想,希望描绘出生动的画卷,把渐远渐浓的记忆浓缩在画框内,以表达自己内心对窗外风景的眷恋。她用自己的眼睛去看世界,于是世界有了色彩,无论其题材的选择,还是描绘视觉状态下的色彩,都带有强烈而鲜明的主体意识,包含了她的审美情感和价值观念。正是这种强烈的主体意识使其作品所负载的意蕴和内涵得以深化,人性深度和文化价值也得以扩张,赋予作品以独特的风格,带给读者“早晨一股清新的风”。本论文在第一章简介里首先综述凯瑟小说在国内外学界的接受和反应,追溯了文学印象主义的起源和历史发展过程,并在此基础上总结归纳文学印象主义的概念及特点,指出文学印象主义概念含糊的原因之一是没有抓住印象派绘画和文学印象主义的共同内核:他们的作品是画家、作家用其主体的目光去审视世界,作品是其主体生命、情感和审美的承载,是主体意识萌生的表征。作为绘画技巧的印象主义被文学家吸收后,在创作中表现感觉对外界光、色等的直觉;注意捕捉模糊不清的转瞬即逝的感觉印象及这种瞬间感觉经验如何转化为情感状态,通过片断的印象来展现一个完整的世界。从一定程度上来说,人类前进的步伐不仅是由人的理性推动并完成的,它同时也是人类感性观念变革的结果。可以说绘画及整个艺术的历史是一部看的历史,是人类视觉思维改变的历史,它清晰地记录了那些具有思想的艺术家是怎样看待和改变人与对象客体的关系和角度。古希腊时期艺术被认为是自然的摹仿,文艺复兴时期艺术更是被当作自然和现实的“一面镜子”,强调摹仿和再现的价值。在这种求真的原则中,主体永远躲在艺术作品后面悄无声息。印象派绘画前的传统艺术未能做到超越现实并把主体所涉及到客体抽象并加上想像,再回到最初的印象即主体中。人作为主体如何超越客体,拥有把人自身作为理解和反思世界的自觉前提这种主体意识,到了印象派那里才得以开始生成。本论文第二章论述凯瑟作品中运用色彩方面主体意识的生成。色彩作为外在于人的现象是随人生命的产生而被知觉、感受和识别的。人对于色彩的认识、思考和理解,在一定程度上体现出人类在把握客体世界及认识自我过程中思维的发展历史。印象派以前的画家们相信一个可以依赖作为客体色彩存在的固有色,而印象派大师们相信自己,相信主体可以追寻和把握随光源而变幻的颜色,他们寻求色彩感觉,这种感觉的寻求转化为以主体为原则了。莫奈的《日出·印象》是某个海面上日出偶然的一瞥,然而它又必然是主体的,是主体识别后并“创造”出的自然,而不是主体去模仿的自然。凯瑟以自己独特的目光,把握光与色的变化,细腻、优美的充满光色的环境描写既是其小说的有机组成部分,又是具有独立审美意义的抒情叙事篇章。在这些篇章里,凯瑟情缘物发,融情于景,构成一种物我合一的境界。这为烘托作品人物的性格和生活提供了一个带有情感色彩的背景,具有情感规定性,起到了触发、映衬和阐释的作用。在凯瑟所描绘的画面中,人事景物成了审美表达的载体,审美情感是它的核心色调,她所描绘的美丽如画的世界已由现实的世界变成其心目中的世界,而这种主体情感的表达并非一种直抒胸臆的方式,而是将自己的爱憎、褒贬经过理智的过滤渗透于细节和字句,创造出一种浓烈色彩的情景交融的意境、氛围和情调,使其作品生发出一种抒情散文式的艺术魅力和美感效应,引导读者走向一个风俗画和风景画一样的主客观情思交融的世界。第三章分析凯瑟作品中构图方面主体意识的生成,表现在点、线、面三个方面。对印象派画家们来说,构图只有一个含义,即主体的创造。他们以自由尽情表现的构图,强调个体化的主体。因为他们强调的是瞬时的印象,作品的立意与构造几乎在主体当中已经形成,他们力争摆脱客体的束缚,让主体在绘画中尽情地畅游。凯瑟选择瞬间印象作为其小说的基本要素来作为作品构思的点,在她看来生活由瞬间接受的来自外部世界的各种印象组成,每一个瞬间在其零乱、琐碎的表面背后都向人们揭示一个完整、统一的结构关系,人生的意义便从中显现。《啊,拓荒者!》是由五个片断构成;《教授的住宅》是由主人公的内心活动片断组成,在忽前忽后的往返穿插中,不断把叙述者过去生活的有关回忆的片断和印象穿插进来;《我的安东妮亚》、《一个迷途的女人》都是由叙述者的印象片断串联组合逐步使零碎孤立的印象交织成一副完整的画面,从而展示主人公完整的形象。描写这些印象片断就是要在这主体流动的感觉中抓住瞬间的美,让读者清晰、直观地去感觉主体所感受的一切。凯瑟以并置的手法进行作品线的构图。印象主义画家为捕捉画布上的空间瞬间,将时间上的片刻凝固,通过并置的不同色彩的颤动、物体的运动以及构图的形式,将空间转化为时间。印象主义作家为了创造空间化的时间瞬间来展示印象,将时间变形,通过场景片断的来回穿插,使零碎的意象组合以及使过去和现在相融合,从而使时间显现出空间的形式,时间和空间相互转换。凯瑟在其作品中为了描绘各种事件在一瞬间给人留下的印象,精心设计小说的结构,有意打破传统小说情节发展的自然流程,采用印象主义画家们常用的并置手法,将几个画面或放置在一起穿插叙述,或放置在不同的章节分别描述,叙述仿佛变成画布上众多的即刻性笔触,在一系列流动的印象中表达小说的深层意蕴。这种并置手法使作品充满了空间艺术感,过去和现在并列,各种事件相互关联,相互映衬,静态的空间画面被剪辑和叠加在一起,降低了时间的连续性,营造了一种共时性的空间效果。这种并置效果在《教授的住宅》中尤为明显,回忆和现在、理想和绝望相互交织,让主人公彼得对自身的命运有了重新的体认。这种手法冲破了传统小说以故事情节为框架的束缚,背离了现实主义小说由情节演绎主题的结构模式,这种背离体现了主体的独立,准确地说它标明了主体的萌生。面的构图意味着如何调整点、线诸单元之间的空间位置关系。对印象派大师们来说,自由是其最强烈的追求,他们在画布上尽情表现自己的特征,表现来自主体的印象,这个主体与以往主体不同的是其个性化。如德加的名画《舞台上的芭蕾排练》中运用俯视角的构图方法几乎是以往的构图中没有出现过的。俯视看上去是个视角的问题,其实却反映了主体的一个自主性的行为方式,即不是把舞台上芭蕾舞的排练展示在那儿,而是画家作为主体从一个从未被注意或想到的角度去“看”这些排练。在这里,客体是处于被审视的地位,客体被主体化了。这种构图方法本质上把对客体的感受作为主体,体现了主体意识的独立。同样,凯瑟在作品构图的面上采用了最便于表现主体情感的内向性叙述视角,这种内向性视角不仅注意客观地描绘外部世界的特征,更加重视外部世界作为客体引起主体的感觉和体验,揭示主体的内心世界,这个世界是主体的世界。凯瑟通过叙述人强有力的干预,着意凸显作者明确的主体立场,其视角的选择确认了对人物印象的倚重,实现了叙事重心从“事”到“人”的转移,彰显出充分的主体意识。《我的安东妮亚》、《一个迷途的女人》及《教授的住宅》都是由第三人称有限视角这种内化了的描写视角和盘托出,通过深入细致的描写如春雨润物般传达主体的感受,使作品蒙上一层淡淡的感伤情绪,从而增强作品的抒情浓度,表露作者对美好事物的憧憬和对人生理想的追求。第四章探究凯瑟在选择题材方面主体意识的生成。印象派绘画大师们是用心、用主体去审视、去透视生活,试图有自己作为主体的思考。在他们的视野里,到处都是与心境相通的东西,风景在他们那里不再是单调的题材而是生命意识本身。马奈的作品把平民意志纳入题材当中,把自己的思考作为主体;莫奈的《日出·印象》把生活中转瞬即逝的普通景色描绘成蕴含无限斑斓色彩,包含着无穷无尽的美的图画。因为这日出经过了莫奈内心的转化,经过其主体的熔炼,画家目光中的风景是灿烂的世界。梵高的《向日葵》是梵高有生命的向日葵,它不仅仅是画家作为主体思考过程的呈现而存在,更是主体情感和审美的表征,它是主体对生命的赞美,是主体的一首诗,是主体意识的绽放。凯瑟对于题材的选择上一样有着强烈的主体意识。她看到工业化高度发展给社会带来的种种弊端,怀念纯朴的西部拓荒生活,对现代文明采取一种相对保守的态度,试图在高度发展的工业化社会里寻求一种精神美。她把视野投向了美国西部拓荒者以及由此形成的精神传统,透过这扇窗,表现她心目中的理想境界。她对拓荒精神无限怀旧的激情代替了情节这个在传统意义上赋予小说内在统一性的因素而成为连接作品的纽带,将记忆的碎片拼接成优美的画卷,画卷上的旖旎风景成为凯瑟心灵的栖息地。题材的选择构成了凯瑟创作的关键,也充分体现了她对主体性的坚守。论文第五章尝试阐发论文作者对文学印象主义的理解。如果把传统现实主义比作镜子的话,现代主义可以用棱镜作比喻,那么印象主义可用窗子来作比喻:透过主体选择的这扇窗的视角而不是全方位的来展现客体,在这种展现过程中主体意识得以萌生,而棱镜则意味着对客体的变形从而扩张了主体意识。凯瑟于1922年首次发表的《没有家具的小说》,标志着她对艺术本质的成熟思考,是对她文学理想的总结,可以称为凯瑟作为小说家刻意追求的自成一统的创作风格的理论基石。浪漫主义跌宕起伏的情节以及现实主义事无巨细的细节已经不再是凯瑟小说关注的对象;相反,凯瑟主要考察在一系列事件面前,如何做出自己的选择。她信奉在事物的无数特征中进行筛选并表现本质的艺术,无论如何也比那种仅仅仔细观察并准确再现的艺术困难得多。她对巴尔扎克崇拜的同时也对其颇有微词,认为其在小说中再现景物,达到无以复加的程度,称其为某种意义上的“室内装修匠”和“传奇故事作家”。相反,凯瑟对托尔斯泰较为欣赏,认为在托尔斯泰笔下,景物描写是经验的一份,物与人水乳交融。凯瑟一方面肯定美国现实主义奠基者豪维尔斯所代表的现实主义带给读者一种真实可感的氛围,另一方面又不满足于这种平板肤浅的装饰和描摹现实,认为作家应有足够的想象力来表现情感的氛围,拓展现实主义文学的深度和广度,这体现了她作为一个过渡型人物身上体现出的创新意识。而这种创新意识在本论文作者看来正是主体意识的萌发与生成。论文在结论部分总结了凯瑟小说整体的审美效果。文学印象主义的运用使凯瑟实现了艺术化地表现内在情感与外在环境的联系,使其作品实现了主体与客体的融合,这生发了她作品的一个主要特点:不在编织情节上着力,不以曲折离奇的故事取胜,而是着重剖析人物的精神世界。读者在阅读其作品时,会明显感到情节叙事因素的淡化,字里行间洋溢着作者的情感因素。尽管情节叙事在小说中仍然存在,但它已经不构成小说的主要意义内容和结构内容,而成了表达主体情感所必需的依托和手段,从而使其小说在文体上更接近于散文抒情叙事作品。这种将主观感情融入客观现实的印象主义风格使其作品一方面避免了浪漫主义不着边际的幻想和追随读者欣赏趣味的被动倾向,也避免了某些现实主义作品机械模仿现实作出的毫无说服力道德说教的弊端。凯瑟把想象与情感氛围艺术化地结合在一起,寓教于审美之中。这种浪漫主义的灵活娱乐性与现实主义的指导作用的结合使其作品步入一个新的发展空间,体现了从传统向现代过渡的特点。凯瑟丹青妙笔描绘出的如诗如画的窗外风景体现了其追求精神美及心灵美的道德价值主题,透过这扇窗,凯瑟得以找回自己心灵归属的精神家园;而窗外吹来的清新的风,也给生活在喧嚣社会中的人们一个陶冶情操、净化心灵的艺术契机。更多还原

【Abstract】 Impressionism,an artistic movement which originated from the French painting of the late 19^th century,has brought about an aesthetic revolution not only in the sphere of painting but also in other fields of art.The impressionist painters have created distinctive artistic features by attempting to depict transitory visual impressions and emphasize the aesthetic function of painting.Light and color are used as chief tools to conceive the world.Impressionism,together with post-impressionism,which developed from impressionism and was more concerned with moods or sensations,has greatly influenced literature and provided a great deal of inspiration to literary writing.Literary impressionism is characterized by the use of perceptions of color and light to evoke subjective and sensory impression.It mediates between subject and object,makes the surface show the depth and the fragment suggest the whole.Through such a significant form,an organic structure and theme are thus achieved.The novels of Willa Cather,the Pulitzer Prize winner in 1923,have been bestsellers and have led to the production of a large number of scholarly works from critics. However,no one has ever tried to analyze systematically her works by using literary impressionism,especially the consciousness of subject in impressionism,except for a few articles abroad briefly mentioning the use of color in her works.This fact urges the writer of this dissertation to explore the impressive staying power of her works,to study the literary impressionism implied in her works and her aesthetic pursuit.Considering the features of literary impressionism in Cather’s creation,the writer of this paper attempts to use theories relating to literary impressionism to analyze Cather’s novels and her literary theory.Drawing on literary impressionism,both theoretically and methodologically,by re-reading Cather’s novels,the author of this paper believes that what we have found not only enables us to have completely new insight into her novels’ content,form and language use,but also more importantly,into the complexity and profundity of her writing.We hold that Cather belongs to neither romanticism with strong sentiment nor pure realism of depiction.By applying the theory of literary impressionism,we can get a better understanding of her style and artistic appeal.O Pioneers!,My Antonia,A Lost Lady and The Professor’s House have been chosen as the objects of this study because these novels are Cather’s famous writings,which not only include her innovation in writing pioneer novels after she has found her own voice,but also consist of her top achievement in her unique style.These novels are sufficient for the revelation of her writing features.Cather,with the position of an observer by the window,observes the world with her own eyes and the world takes on a color of her own,which brings a strong and distinctive consciousness of subject in her selection of the material and her description of the perception.This consciousness of subject embodies her aesthetic standards and value conceptions.It is just owing to this consciousness of subject that the connotation of her novels is widened, which brings the reader "the morning perfume of garden".Chapter One,the introduction of this dissertation provides a general view of the critical responses to Willa Cather both at home and abroad.After briefly tracing the origin and historical development of literary impressionism,this paper gives a summary of the definition and features of literary impressionism and points out that the present confusion in defining the term is due to the failure to grasp the common core of impressionist painting and literary impressionism:both the painters and the writers observe the world with their subjective eyes and their works are the carriers of their life, passion,and their aesthetic standard as the subject,the representation of the germination of the subjective consciousness of the subject.The writers,after having absorbed the techniques of the impressionist painters,strive to present human perception,focusing their individual impression on a fleeting moment to provide the fragments of impression upon which the whole can be constructed.In a sense,the progress of mankind is not only promoted by human rational knowledge but is the result of the improvement of human perceptual idea.It can be said that the history of painting and even the history of all art is the history of observation which reflects the change of human visual sense and records clearly how the thoughtful artists consider and change the angle of the observation in the relation between the subject and object.In ancient Greece,art was considered an imitation of nature.During the Renaissance period,art was thought "a mirror" of nature and reality,and the value of copying and reproduction was highly emphasized.According to such principle of truth,the subject was forever hidden behind the artistic work.The traditional art before impressionism failed to transcend the reality,to observe the object in an abstract imaginative way and then again come back to the primary impression of the subject. How is it possible for man as the subject to transcend the object and possess the subjective consciousness which upholds man himself as the conscious presupposition of understanding and reflecting the world? This problem remained unsettled until the appearance of impressionism.Chapter Two explores the formation of subjective consciousness in color in Cather’s novels.Color,as an external phenomenon,is perceived and felt with the birth of man.The process of knowing,pondering and understanding color,in a degree,reflects the development of the history of mankind’s thinking in treating the objective world and knowing himself.The painters before impressionism believe that there is a "true" color that can be trusted as the existing color of the object,while the impressionist painters trust themselves,believing that the subject can pursue and master colors that change themselves with light.They run after the sense of color.This pursuit of sense has changed to be directed by the subject.Monet’s Impression.Sunrise is not just an image of the dawn over a harbor, but an effect of the scene on the eye of a subject-observer.The painting expresses a perception.While less fully descriptive than the conventional paintings,it has its own validity-a truth to the perception of nature rather than an imitation of nature.Cather looks at light and color in a similar way.The exquisite,detailed and graphic descriptions of the environment are not only parts of her novels,they also serve independently as narrative sections of aesthetic conception.In those narrative sections her emotions come from and compose a state of fusion with the objects around,which provides an emotional background for the life and disposition of the characters.There is a specification of emotion in contrast and elaboration.The characters and the objects in the picturesque scene she describes become the carrier of aesthetic representation,with the emotion as its central tone.The picturesque world she describes becomes her ideal rather than the real world.This subjective emotion is not represented directly as what it is but is presented only after her feclings have been filtered through reason,which creates a dense colorful mood, atmosphere and appeal of a blending of feeling and setting.Thus,a kind of artistic glamour and aesthetic feeling like lyric prose is developed and the reader is led to a picturesque world of custom and scenery.Chapter Three analyzes the forming of the subjective consciousness in Cather’s composition of novels,which is chiefly manifested from three aspects:dot,line and tableau.To the impressionist painters,composition means only one thing:the creation of subjective consciousness,which means to emphasize the individualized" subject through freely represented composition.The conception and composition of the picture have almost been formed in the subject,for what the impressionist painters emphasize is the fleeting impression with the aim of a free sightseeing tour for the subject.Cather also chooses fleeting impression as the essential element for the dot of composition, because,as she sees it,life is composed of impressions received at a moment by the mind and the illumination of each moment reveals the meaning of life.While O Pioneers! is composed of five parts,The Professor’s House consists of the now forward and then backward inner activities of the protagonist.During such a process the episodes and impressions of the narrator’s recollection are inserted;My Antonia and A Lost Lady are all like integrated pictures of a complete figure made of slices of impression from the linking of the narrator’s episodes.The purpose of describing those impressions is to hold the fleeting beauty through the flowing perception of the subject so as to convey clearly and directly whatever the subject feels.Cather uses juxtaposition to compose the line of her work.In order to draw the special moment on the canvas,the impressionist painters fix the moment in time and translate space into time through the juxtaposition of different colors,the movement of the objects and the form of composition.The impressionist writers,in order to create the fleeting moment in space to display the impression,do something similar to transform time and space through the interspersion of the episodes and the fusion of the past and the present.Similarly Cather meticulously arranges the structure of the novel,breaks the natural flow of the traditional plot and inverts the time order to describe the impression left by various events.Through juxtaposition commonly used by impressionist painters, Cather,by weaving several scenes together or putting them in different sections, produces various instant strokes in her narration to convey the deep meaning through the series of the flowing impressions.By juxtaposing the past and the present,and connecting and contrasting various events,the novelist rearranges the static pictures and reduces the continuity of time,thus the use of juxtaposition fills the novels with an artistic spatial sense and a synchronic spatial result is achieved.The effect of juxtaposition is most obvious in the novel The Professor’s House,in which the recollection and the present,the ideal and the despair are woven together,from which the protagonist St.Peter experiences his fate once again.This means of artistic expression breaks through the bonds of the traditional novel plot,and departs from the structural mode of realism which develops the theme from the plot.This kind of departure embodies the independence of the subject,to be exact,it indicates the forming of the subject.The composition of tableau means the modification of the spatial relationship between various dots and lines.Freedom is what the impressionist painters appreciate most.They develop their own characteristics by expressing the impression from the subject and this subject is distinct for its obvious individuality.In the famous picture Rehearsal on the Stage,Degas uses the overlooking angle to compose his scene,which, till then,had never been used in the other paintings.Overlooking,while it seems a problem of point of view here,actually reflects the self-directed performance of the subject.That is to say,it is not just a display of the moment of rehearsal,but an observation with a studious eye of the subject from an angle never noticed before.Here, the object exists to be observed and subjectified.This method of composition,in essence,highlights the feeling of the subject and embodies the independence of the subject.Likewise,Cather uses the inner point of view that can best demonstrate the subjective emotion.This inner point of view not only depicts objectively the outside world,but also pays more attention to the impression and perception to manifest the inner world of the subject.This inner world is the world of the subject.From such an angle,Cather shows a clear subjective position.And her choice of narrator confirms her focus on the impression of the character.This strategy achieves the narrative diversion from "plot" to "man",which also displays Cather’s subjective consciousness to the full. My Antonia,A Lost Lady,and The Professor’s House are all conducted in the third person restricted narrative point of view.This internalized point of view reveals naturally the subjective feeling,which brings a faint sentiment to the work.In the process of the increasing lyric atmosphere,the author’s longing for the beautiful and her pursuit of the ideal is conveyed.Chapter Four probes the forming of the subjective consciousness in the way Cather chooses her material.The impressionist painters,using their mind and their subject to observe and perceive life,attempt to have their own reflection as the subject.That’s why everything in their fields of vision is communicated with the minds and the scenery in their view is no longer a dull theme but life itself.Many of Manet’s pictures take the life of the common people as his material and his own thinking as subject.Monet’s painting Impression·Sunrise describes the common scene in life as a bright-colored picture which contains boundless beauty,for this sunrise has been translated by the subject,by the mind of Monet.That’s why the scenery in his vision is a world of brilliance.Van Gogh’s sunflowers are his living sunflowers because they exist not only as the expression of the thinking process of the painter as the subject but more as the representation of the subjective emotion and aesthetic concept.Therefore the picture is more like a song of life,a poem and the full bloom of the subject.Cather has the same strong subjective consciousness in choosing her material.Noticing the various abuses brought about by the rapid development of industrialization,she longs for simple pioneer life and takes a rather reserved attitude toward modern civilization.In trying to seek a spiritual beauty in the highly industrialized society,she turns her view to the life of the American western pioneers and their tradition,which is just like watching beautiful pictures through a window,in this way her ideal is conveyed.In many of her novels,the nostalgic passion for the pioneer spirit replaces the function of the traditional plot to achieve unity and becomes the bond of the whole work.It pieces together the scraps of memory to form charming scenic pictures,which have become the place of Cather’s spiritual inhabitation.The selection of the material is vital to Cather’s writing and also an exhibition of her persistence on subjectivity.Chapter Five tries to elucidate the understanding of literary impressionism the author of this paper has acquired.If realism can be compared to a mirror,modernism to a prism,then literary impressionism can be likened to a window.The object is represented through the point of view of the window as chosen by the subject rather than panoramically.During the process of such representation,the consciousness of the subject is forming,while the metaphor of prism implies the transformation of the object, and thus means the expansion of the consciousness of the subject."The Novel D（?）meubl（?）",published in 1922 represents Cather’s mature reflection on the nature of art.It can be regarded as a summary of her literary ideal and theoretical basis,upon which Cather,as a novelist,develops a unique writing style.Cather concerns herself neither with the romantic twists in the plot nor with the realistic detailed description.Rather,she pays more attention to the selection from among a series of events.She believes it is much more difficult to decide among the various features of objects in displaying the nature of art than just to observe the object carefully and reproduce it exactly.She worships Balzac but at the same time she mutters disparaging remarks about his utmost literalness and calls him "interior decorator" and a writer of "romance of business":you have to sort out Balzac’s meanings from a great dusty warehouse of misplaced vain matter-furniture,in a word.On the contrary, Cather highly appreciates Tolstoy in that his description of the material things is always so much a part of the emotions of the people that they are perfectly synthesized.Cather, on the one hand,affirms the realistic atmosphere created by realism represented by Howells,the founder of American realism,on the other hand,she is not satisfied with this kind of mechanical imitation of reality.She holds that a writer should have the imaginative power to manifest the emotional atmosphere so as to deepen and broaden the traditional realism.Those ideas display Cather’s creative sense,which in the opinion of the writer of this dissertation,implies the forming of the consciousness of the subject.The conclusion summarizes the general aesthetic effect of the employment of literary impressionism in Cather’s works.This effect helps to link artistically the inner feelings with the external surroundings and fuse the subject and the object together, which develops one obvious feature of her works:the simplification of the plot and the concentration on the spiritual realm of the character.While reading her novels,we can easily feel Cather’s emotion between lines of the simple plot.Although the plot narrative still exists,it does not constitute the main content and structure but becomes the tool and back-up of expressing the subjective feelings.As a result,the style of Cather’s novels comes close to that of narrative lyric prose.The style of the fusion of subjective emotion and objective reality avoids not only the passive tendency of romanticism caused by unpractical illusion and the pursuit of readers’ interests,but also the pale moral lessons of some realist mechanical writings.The artistic fusion of imagination and emotional atmosphere,the implication of the moral adherence in aesthetic concept-such a combination of the flexible entertainment of romanticism and the instructive function of realism leads her works into a new stage of development and embodies the transition from tradition to modern.The picturesque scenery through the window painted by Cather’s superb artistry reflects the theme of her pursuit of lofty spirit and noble heart,from which Cather finds her spiritual garden.What is more,the fresh air blown through the window provides an artistic moment,and the people living in the modern world today of sound and fury are able to cultivate their minds and purify their souls.更多还原