Reading American War Literature, Reading Ernest Hemingway

Examination of how Hemingway’s World War I experiences shaped his sense of self and writing and in turn how his fiction informed the later war literature of Salter and O’Brien. Vernon situates Hemingway’s expression of social and gender identities within the contexts of modern literary history, twentieth-century war literature, and critical theory, drawing particularly on gender and feminist criticism. Discusses evolving cultural views on military service, masculinity, and women’s roles in his study of The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, “Big Two-Hearted River,” “Soldier’s Home,” and other fiction