New Essays on a Farewell to Arms

When first published in 1929, Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms was decried as a vulgar novel, and was actually banned in Boston. In his extensive introduction, Scott Donaldson explains this initial reception, and then traces the change in perception toward the novel. The essays in this collection show that Farewell was a revolutionary novel that has only now begun to be understood – sixty years after publication. Sandra Spanier demonstrates how World War I determined the behaviour patterns of Catherine Barkley; James Phelan examines the first person narration; Ben Stoltzfus studies the novel from psychoanalytical (Lacanian) angles, and Paul Smith traces Hemingway’s repeated attempts to write about the war.