Willa Cather book

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Cost
285.00

This course was available in the past and may be presented again as part of the Open Enrollment curriculum.

Here is the quiet but arresting story of Father Jean Marie Latour, who in 1851 travels with his childhood friend and fellow priest Joseph Vaillant to take possession of the newly-created diocese of New Mexico. Willa Cather chronicles the forty-year mission of Fr. Latour to build a diocese and a cathedral, to form into a Catholic people a mixture of Mexicans, Indians, and American Protestants by way of two French missionary priests. The novel is remarkable, not least because it nowhere features a dramatic or introspective "loss of faith" by its protagonist. Instead, the reader is treated to a series of episodes, wherein time moves back and forth, as the two pious priests go about their humble work. Death Comes for the Archbishop makes the landscapes of the Southwest present to a reader's internal eye. One can see Fr. Latour riding across the desert, wondering how to discipline his dissolute priests and meditating on the inscrutable religious practices of his semi-Catholic Indians. Cather has also transposed the language of Christianity into New Mexico. The Gospel unlocks the story of the mission, and one feels a sense of vertigo when reading about the bishop's donkeys being led by angels (pp. 50), Magdalena's salvation from a wretched life (pp. 65ff), or tales of boys sneaking into the bishop's garden to steal pears (pp. 216). Life in New Mexico demands to be understood in light of the Gospel. Course Syllabus.

Notes

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