Traces Hemingway's critical fortunes over the ninety years of his
prominence, telling us something about what we value in literature and
why scholarly reputations rise and fall.
Hemingway burst on the literary scene in the 1920s with spare,
penetrating short stories and brilliant novels. Soon he was held as a
standard for modern writers. Meanwhile, he used his celebrity to create
a persona like the stoic, macho heroes of his fiction. After a decline
during the 1930s and 1940s, he came roaring back with The Old Man and
the Sea in 1952. Two years later he received the Nobel Prize.
While his popularity waxed and waned during his lifetime, Hemingway's
reputation among scholars remained strong as long as traditional
scholarship dominated. New approaches beginning in the 1960s brought a
sea change, however, finding grave fault with his work and making him a
figure ripe for vilification. Yet during this time scholarship on him
continued to appear. His works still sell well, and several are staples
on high-school and college syllabi. A new scholarly edition of his
letters is drawing prominent attention, and there is a resurgence in
scholarly attention to - and approbation for - his work. Tracing
Hemingway's critical fortunes tells us something about what we value in
literature and why reputations rise and fall as scholars find new ways
to examine and interpret creative work.
Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University. Among
other books, he has written volumes on Austen, Dickens, Tennyson,
Updike, and Matthew Arnold for Camden House's Literary Criticism in
Perspective series.
