Abstract:Willa Cather was an outstanding female author in modern American literary history. Her novels sing high praise for the pioneers living in western United States, their pioneering spirit and their strong will. Maxwell Geismar considers her as “a defender of the spiritual graces in the midst of an increasingly materialistic culture”. Cather is good at using the archetypes of ancient Greek，Roman or Christian mythologies, and creating a lot of vivid images of women. This thesis makes a brief analysis and a comparison between the women characters in My Antonia and the mythological mother goddesses. In addition, there are also some archetypal images in the novel. This thesis tries to interpret the novel from these aspects so that we can better understand the writing characteristics of the author and the literary value of her works.

Key Words: Willa Cather；mythology；archetype

CONTENTS

Abstract

中文摘要

1.Introduction1

  1.1 Introduction to Willa Cather

  1.2 Introduction to My Antonia

  1.3 Literature Review

2. Brief Introduction to Archetypal Criticism...3

3. The System of Archetypes in My Antonia5

  3.1 The Archetypal Characters

    3.1.1 The Image of Antonia—Demeter

    3.1.2 The Image of Lena Lingard—Hestia

  3.2 The Archetypal Images

    3.2.1 The Archetypal Wilderness

    3.2.2 The Archetypal Garden

4.Conclusion .9

Bibliography..10

Acknowledgments.....11