Copyright © 2011 by University of Nebraska–Lincoln, all rights reserved. Redistribution or republication in any medium, except as allowed under the Fair Use provisions of U.S. copyright law, requires express written consent from the editors and advance notification of the publisher, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
The term literary architecture can be defined
in a number of ways. Three definitions can
serve as points of reference on a continuum.
The first definition focuses on architecture–
structural design–in Great Plains literature.
The structures that people live in are frequently
a concern, especially in stories of the
first European settlers. The dugouts and sod
houses originate out of necessity, not preference.
The settlers' wives especially resist living
in the ground itself. Their reluctance springs
not only from the inconveniences associated
with setting up housekeeping in dark, leaking,
bug-infested structures but, more important,
from their cultural antipathy to living like
burrowing animals and thereby becoming
beastlike, uncivilized. O. E. Rölvaag's novel
A second definition refers to works in which the design and building of a house form a central theme. In some instances, the conflict centers on the woman's dream of the amenities realized in a clean, fashionable frame house, while the man focuses on the acquisition of land and the equipment necessary to realize financial security. Ironically, once the family's homestead is established and the fine house is built, the structure often becomes a symbol not of fulfillment but of entrapment or pride, as in Frederick Manfred's novel
A third definition focuses on the literary structure of Great Plains works themselves. Most Great Plains writers are aware of the complex relationship between the geography of place and the social structures that people create around themselves and in their communities. Although there are many variations, the conflicts–and characters' reactions to them–fall into some familiar patterns. The most common conflict juxtaposes a character who focuses on the land's promise of abundance or wealth against another's insistence on the primacy of societal values: home, family, community. Because Great Plains literary works are about a place that seems spare, the style of Great Plains fiction is also deceptively plain, but, like the intricate roots of prairie grasses, this plain style is often the result of the deliberate planning of a literary work's structure. Willa Cather codified this definition of literary architecture in her essay "The Novel Démeublé" (1922). In the "unfurnished" novel, Cather declared, the artist's aim is not to re-create a realistic world but to select material and present it by a "suggestion rather than by enumeration." A work of art should enable the reader to "feel what is on the page" without having it specifically named. In Great Plains literature, the focus on the elemental struggle to survive and the parallel need for personal fulfillment within a community has created a body of carefully designed works. Cather's own novels are perhaps the best illustration of this third definition of literary architecture. Her deceptively simple stories reveal, upon examination, layers of "felt" but unarticulated realities. Other authors, most notably Wright Morris, have recast this unfurnished style in the postmodern age, relying on the reader's knowledge of the region's apparently simple surface and its underlying complexities as well as the Great Plains literary tradition to provide the framework for an appreciation of the region's literary architecture.
See also EUROPEAN AMERICANS:
Giants in the Earth.