Chapter One Introduction 1
1.1．A Brief Review of the Critical Reponses to Willa Cather's Novels 1
1.2 A Survey of Impressionism in Painting 8
1.3．A Bird's-eye View of the Situation between Subject and Object in Traditional Paintings 12
1.4．A General Introduction to Literary Impressionism 21
Chapter Two The Subjective Consciousness in Color 34
2.1．The Use of Color to Paint Pictures in Cather's Mind's Eye 41
2.2．The Use of Color to Suggest Emotion in O Pioneers!and My Antonia 52
Chapter Three The Composition 69
3.1．The Dot Composition 71
3.1.1．Simplification 74
3.1.2．Impressions as the Flow of Emotion in My Antonia 92
3.2．The Line:The Conscious Design—Juxtaposition 109
3.2.1．Juxtaposition in The Professor's House 114
3.2.2．Juxtaposition as a Means of Spatializing Fictional Structure in The Professor's House 131
3.3．The Tableau:The Inner Point of View 139
3.3.1．Jim as the First-person Narrator in My Antonia 146
3.3.2．The Point of View in A Lost Lady 154
Chapter Four The Conscious Selection of Material 169
4.1．Cather's Artistic Pursuit 169
4.2．The Selection of the Material 174
Chapter Five Cather and Literary Impressionism 195
5.1．Cather and Impressionism 196
5.2．The Analogy of Window 214
Chapter Six Conclusion 233
Bibliography 244
后记 267