New, carefully focused essays providing a thorough examination of
Hemingway's groundbreaking non-fictional work.
Published in 1932, Death in the Afternoon reveals its author at the
height of his intellectual and stylistic powers. By that time, Hemingway
had already won critical and popular acclaim for his short stories and
novels of the late twenties. A mature and self-confident artist, he now
risked his career by switching from fiction to nonfiction, from American
characters to Spanish bullfighters, from exotic and romantic settings to
the tough world of theSpanish bullring, a world that might seem
frightening and even repellant to those who do not understand it.
Hemingway's nonfiction has been denied the attention that his novels and
short stories have enjoyed, a state of affairs this Companion seeks to
remedy, breaking new ground by applying theoretical and critical
approaches to a work of nonfiction. It does so in original essays that
offer a thorough, balanced examination of a complex, boundary-breaking,
and hitherto neglected text. The volume is broken into sections dealing
with: the composition, reception, and sources of Death in the Afternoon;
cultural translation, cultural criticism, semiotics, and paratextual
matters; and the issues of art, authorship, audience, and the literary
legacy of Death in the Afternoon. The contributors to the volume, four
men and seven women, lay to rest the stereotype of Hemingway as a macho
writer whom women do not read; and their nationalities (British,
Spanish, American, and Israeli) indicate that Death in the Afternoon,
even as it focuses on a particular national art, discusses matters of
universal concern.
Contributors: Miriam B. Mandel, Robert W. Trogdon, Lisa Tyler, Linda
Wagner-Martin, Peter Messent, Beatriz Penas Ibáñez, Anthony Brand, Nancy
Bredendick, Hilary Justice, Amy Vondrak, and Keneth Kinnamon.
MiriamB. Mandel teaches in the English Department of Tel Aviv
University.
