Hemingway unbound: Reading a modernist subjectivity.
Item
-
Title
-
Hemingway unbound: Reading a modernist subjectivity.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9605591
-
identifier
-
9605591
-
Creator
-
Elliott, Ira.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Jane Marcus
-
Date
-
1995
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Literature, American | Literature, Modern
-
Abstract
-
Hemingway Unbound attempts to demonstrate how Ernest Hemingway's so-called code hero frequently occupies an ambiguous middle position in respect to culturally-determined categories that are understood as expressive of individual identity, primarily gender and sexuality, but also race, ethnicity, and national origin. It seeks further to locate, and theorize the reasons behind, the sense of nada at the heart of Hemingway's work, the code hero's feeling of loss and alienation that is often manifest in his longing for a dark girl who resembles a boy. Hemingway Unbound is therefore meant to join the ongoing conversation of the last decade or so in Hemingway scholarship, a conversation informed and enabled by contemporary critical theories of gender, sexuality, and, most recently, modernism and primitivism.;Hemingway Unbound begins with an overview of Hemingway criticism before exploring the concept of psychological depth--that is, the discovery of the unconscious and its role in structuring individual identity--and how such depth is linked to the medical model of homosexuality, both of which are mirrored in Hemingway's literary aesthetic. Subsequent chapters analyze homosocial constructions in Hemingway during time of war; how his male characters experience profound anxieties around paternity, and the reasons they frequently search for a safe haven, an intermediary position, between childhood and fatherhood; and how familial relations in Hemingway strongly suggest incestuous desire by blurring the distinctions between intimacy and eroticism. Masculinity as a performance of identity is then highlighted, as well as tensions in Hemingway between psychological depth and performative subjectivity. An exploration of how corporeal signs are manipulated in The Garden of Eden to figure and refigure identity in a search for lost time is then undertaken before investigating Hemingway's anxieties surrounding art and masculinity. This is followed by a discussion of how the code of aficion itself undermines the quest for a unique and stable identity.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
