Hemingway’s Italy

Rena Sanderson is an associate professor of English at Boise State University and the editor of Blowing the Bridge: Essays on Hemingway and "For Whom the Bell Tolls."

In 1918, a one-month stint with the American Red Cross ambulance corps at the Italian front marked the beginning of Ernest Hemingway's fascination with Italy--a place second only to Upper Michigan in stimulating his lifelong passion for geography and local expertise. This collection of eighteen essays presents a broad view of Hemingway's personal and literary response to Italy during World War I and the 1920s, when he first emerged as a promising young writer, and during his maturity in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The contributors, some of the most distinguished Hemingway scholars, incorporate new biographical and historical information as well as critical approaches ranging from formalist and structuralist theory to cultural and interdisciplinary explorations. Included are discussions of Italy's psychological functioning in Hemingway's life, the author's correspondence with his father during the writing of A Farewell to Arms, his stylistic experimentation and characterization in that novel, his juxtaposition of the themes of love and war, and his take on Fascism in both his fiction and journalistic work. In addition, the essayists explore relevant contexts of period and place--such as the rise of Fascism, ethnic attitudes, and the cultural currents between Italy and the United States. A landmark study, Hemingway's Italy brings long overdue attention to this great writer's international role as cultural ambassador.