This dissertation traces the development of a Gothic cathedral iconography in the fiction of Willa Cather and posits that Cather finds in the Gothic cathedral image a metaphor for the writing process and the novel. It argues, aided by Otto Von Simson's comprehensive work The Gothic Cathedral , that Cather incorporates major elements of Gothic cathedral design in her fiction, in characterization, light imagery and novel structure, for example, and links Cather's traditional cathedral images with her images of mountains and mesas.

The dissertation begins by examining: Cather's early story "The Enchanted Bluff'; her 1902 impressions of European edifices; her early literary sources for the cathedral image (i.e., Book of Revelation and Pilgrim's Progress). The study then discusses components of the Gothic motif in Cather's first novel Alexander's Bridge, and expands from there to an exploration of both Romanesque and Gothic cathedral features/philosophy in "The Ancient People" section of The Song of the Lark. It next shows Cather's grasp of Gothic cathedrals and cathedral philosophy in the French Gothic great church found in One of Ours. The ensuing discussion of The Professor's House and Death Comes for the Archbishop illustrates: Cather's continuing development of the Gothic icon; a revelatory discourse on design; Cather's embedding of the Gothic system into the structure of the novels. The study argues that these novels together form the transitional stage from Cather's earlier, more explicit uses of the Gothic image to full use of the metaphor. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a two-part focus on Shadows on the Rock as a novel built on the metaphorical framework of a Gothic cathedral.

Additionally, this study of Cather's fictional use of Gothic cathedral imagery provides further support of the literary influences on Cather of Henry Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It also provides examples of Cather's associative linking of the landscape of the American Southwest with that of the south and south-central regions of France.