Ernest Hemingway & Modernity Paradoxes

In the American literary history, Ernest Hemingway is a unique writer of dual character. This feature endows his literary texts with a kind of internal tension in the ideological and aesthetical aspects. The tension and the internal one of America in its politics, economy, culture and art are homologous. Hemingway's literary texts are imbued with all kinds of paradoxes in the process of American modernization, such as paradoxes between pre-modernism and modernism, between industrialization and post-modernization, between puritan ethics and consumer culture, between high culture and popular culture, between the white culture and multiculturalism, between mainstream culture and marginal culture, between individual freedom and identity anxiety, between the reconstruction of the social roles of male and that of the social roles of female, between anthropocentrism and ecological ethics. The dissertation is to explore from different perspectives and at different levels the duality and the internal tension of Hemingway's literary texts under the various contexts of modernity in the process of American modernization and to find the interaction between Hemingway's duality in character, the internal tensions in his texts and the internal tension inherent in the American culture. The main body of the dissertation is composed of three chapters:Chapter One,'the paradox between the commercial consumer culture in the 1920s and modernity', provides a detailed analysis of the relation of Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises with the cultural constituents and the modern literature & art, for the purpose of revealing the conflicts between the puritan ethics and the consumer culture value, the problems of the self-construction and the identity anxiety of individuals in the transitional period of an industrializing and urbanizing society and Hemingway's discourse duality and modern art's paradox. Chapter Two,'Hemingway's narration in the Americanized marginal culture and the foreign cultures', indicates the significance of Hemingway's writing in the marginal and foreign culture lies in the following three aspects: the pursuit of the subjective freedom and perceptual liberation; the promotion of a typical American modern lifestyle featuring sports, leisure and travel, coinciding with the commercial interest of the modern consumer society, by Hemingway's writing activities in the daily life level, the aesthetic pursuit which breaks away from the daily life in meaning, which reflects the profound tensions existing between society and individuals, and between freedom and control in the social structure of America; and the possibilities provided by Hemingway's texts for the reader of surveying and reflecting such conflicts as between the white and the minorities, the mainstream culture and the foreign cultures, and the subject value and the eco-ethics emerging in the modernizing process of the American society. Chapter Three,'the Hemingway Legend conspired towards by elites, media and the mass', by means of discussing the close relations of Hemingway with the mass media and the popular culture consumptive activities in America, aims at revealing the ways the high literature allies with commercial conduction to produce the cultural significance and pleasure demanded by the mass in the consumer society of America, displaying the complex relationship between the literary creation and the capitalist ideology, and marking the increasingly blurred boundary between the high culture and the popular culture in the post-industrialist society. Within the purview of the popular culture, literature has evolved into a movable cultural feast with multiple text forms and multiple meanings and pleasure, which should be co-produced and shared by all the citizens.