SOURCE: Nettels, Elsa. “Youth and Age in the Old and New Worlds: Willa Cather and A. E. Housman.” In Cather Studies, Vol. 4, edited by Robert Thacker and Michael A. Peterman, pp. 284-93. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Nettels discusses the influence of Housman's poetry on the novels of Willa Cather.

Of all Willa Cather's characters, Godfrey St. Peter, the protagonist of The Professor's House, draws most often on literary sources to express his feelings and perceptions. Embedded in his mind are passages from plays and poems and fictional characters and scenes from novels and short stories brought to the surface of consciousness at critical points in the novel. He quotes from Shakespeare's Othello and Antony and Cleopatra and Long-fellow's translation of a Norse poem. He refers to the knights of King Arthur, Medea, and Anatole France's Monsieur Bergeret. He recalls a scene from Henry...