SOURCE: Salemi, Joseph S. “The Measure of the Music: Prose Rhythm in Willa Cather's ‘Paul's Case.’” Classical and Modern Literature 10, no. 4 (summer 1990): 319–26.

In the following essay, Salemi uses the example of “Paul's Case” to demonstrate his theory that Cather employed her training in the cadences and rhythms of classical writing in her own work.

The elements of an individual prose style are elusive of definition. Although we can sometimes describe a writer's characteristic diction, imagery, and idiomatic preferences, most of our comments will be impressionistic and tentative rather than statistically precise. No writer is perpetually true to type, and fine prose, like every other creative manifestation, is often unpredictable in both its methods and effects. Nevertheless, in a well-established literature the rhetorical mannerisms of certain authors are usually distinguishable after long acquaintance. Habits of syntax and predilections in prosody, along with the stylistic resonances they produce, can be...