Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
READING HEMINGWAY SERIES
MARK CIRINO, EDITOR
ROBERT W. LEWIS, FOUNDING EDITOR
Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises
H. R. Stoneback
Reading Hemingway’s Men Without Women
Joseph M. Flora
Reading Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees
Mark Cirino
Reading Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not
Kirk Curnutt
Reading Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea
Bickford Sylvester, Larry Grimes, and Peter L. Hays
Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos
Reading Hemingway’s
A Farewell to Arms
GLOSSARY AND COMMENTARY
Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos
The Kent State University Press
KENT, OHIO
© 2019 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2018055020
ISBN 978-1-60635-376-9
Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Lewis, Robert W. (Robert William), 1930- author. | Roos, Mike, 1952- author. Title: Reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to arms : glossary and commentary / Robert W. Lewis and Michael Kim Roos.
Description: Kent, Ohio : The Kent State University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018055020 | ISBN 9781606353769 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Hemingway, Ernest, 1899-1961. Farewell to arms. | World War, 1914-1918--United States--Literature and the war.
Classification: LCC PS3515.E37 F35583 2019 | DDC 813/.52--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018055020
23 22 21 20 19 5 4 3 2 1
For Robert W. Lewis
(1930–2013)
To live reasonably is not to live by reason alone—the mistake is easy, and if carried far, disastrous—but to live in a way of which reason, a clear, full sense of the whole situation, would approve.
—I. A. Richards, Poetry and Science
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”
It is true that there is a heaven for the saint, but the saint leaves enough misery here below to sadden him even before the throne of God.
—Emily Brontë, “The Butterfly”
Our deepest convictions—will Science upset them?
—Ernest Hemingway, “Banal Story”
Que sais-je?
—Montaigne
CONTENTS
Introduction: Hemingway’s Anxiety of Influence
Abbreviations for the Works of Ernest Hemingway Used in This Book
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About Reading Hemingway's Farewell to Arms: Glossary and CommentaryClose analysis and commentary on Hemingway's great novel of love, war, and ideas In this comprehensive guide, Lewis and Roos reveal how A Farewell to Arms represents a complex alchemy of Hemingway's personal experience as a Red Cross ambulance driver in 1918, his extensive historical research of a time period and terrain with which he was personally unfamiliar, and the impact of his vast reading in the great works of 19th-century fiction. Ultimately, Lewis and Roos assert, Hemingway's great novel is not simply a story of love and war, as most have concluded, but an intricate novel of ideas exploring the clash of reason and faith and deep questions of epistemology. The commentary also delves deeply into the roots of controversy surrounding the novel's treatment of gender issues through the characters of Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Catherine, they argue, is far more than an object of love; she is a real feminist heroine who is responsible for Frederic's maturation in developing a capacity for true love. Written in clear and accessible prose that will appeal to scholars and Hemingway neophytes alike, Reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms is the most sweeping guide yet available to Hemingway's finest novel and contributes to a richer understanding of the writer's entire body of work. |
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