The critical reception of Hemingway's The sun also rises / Peter L. Hays.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hays, Peter L., 1938-

Series:

Studies in American literature and culture. Literary criticism in perspective

Studies in American literature and culture: literary criticism in perspective

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961. Sun also rises.

Hemingway, Ernest.

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961--Criticism and interpretation--History.

Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961.

Criticism and interpretation.

History.

Physical Description:

345 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Rochester, N.Y. : Camden House, 2011.

Summary:

In the more than eight decades since its publication, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, like a Rorschach blot, has measured not only the critics' opinions of Hemingway but also the critical temper of the times. An initial reviewer saw the book as a satire on American expatriates, an unflattering portrait of wastrels and a nymphomaniac wandering Europe. Other critics of the time saw it as a reflection of post-First World War malaise, inscribing for history the Lost Generation-those critics, that is, who took it as a serious literary effort and did not simply dismiss it as pornographic, as Hemingway's own parents did. Many had more to say about the style of Hemingway's writing than about the possible meanings of the plot. Since then the novel has been interpreted, variously, as a study of an impotent man's existential dilemma, re-read as a modern-day version of the Fisher King myth, attacked by feminist critics as the macho diatribe of a misogynist, and, most recently, seen as a study of gender roles and the performance of masculinity. There is no other book that surveys the entire eighty years of The Sun Also Rises criticism, that documents the fashionable waves in which criticism has traveled, and points out how each age interprets the novel to suit itself, reflecting the cultural concerns of the moment. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: in the beginning

Good style, bad content, no philosophy: the initial reviews

The development of in-depth criticism, 1947-1961

The Hemingway industry takes off: the 1960s and early 1970s

Critical theories take hold: the mid-1970s to mid-1980s

More theories, many gendered, some psychological: the mid-1980s to mid-1990s

The continued proliferation of theory, 1995-2009.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781571133663

1571133666

OCLC:

709669415