| The first half of the twentieth century,when Ernest Hemingway lived,was a time of tremendous temporal and spatial changes when the second industrial revolution was at its peak with high-speed technological development of transportation,communication and media.With the drastic compression of the time cost and the rapid increase in the spatial mobility of human activities,globalization has gradually shifted from a quantitative change in geographical expansion to a qualitative change of the global community.In such a background,Hemingway’s fiction,with his personal experience of spatial flow,is concerned with multiple spatial issues and characterized by spatial narratives.Therefore,a comprehensive,integrated and in-depth spatial research on Hemingway’s fiction should not be absent.Since the middle of the 20 th century,especially after the “spatial turn” in humanities and social sciences in the 1970 s,the theories of spatial studies on literature have developed rapidly,particularly among Marxist literary critics.The extensive research with spatial methods on American fiction has laid a theoretical and practical foundation for the study on Hemingway’s fiction from a spatial perspective.With certain achievement in the spatial researches of Hemingway’s fiction,there is still room for improvement in the coverage,correlation and generalization of the extant studies.For a better analysis of space in Hemingway’s fiction,the four-factor coordinates of literary research proposed by H.M.Abrams,as well as the ideas put forward by scholars such as W.J.T.Mitchell and Xie Xinran to apply the coordinates to spatial studies,provide a scheme of four aspects,i.e.the spatial characteristics of the author,the world,the text,and the readers.Therefore,an all-round spatial study on Hemingway’s fiction could be conducted by focusing on the spatial presentation of Hemingway’s authorship,the literary reconstruction of the spatial world,the spatial techniques in textual creation,and the readers’ reception under spatial perspectives.The author’s authorial identity is presented in Hemingway’s fiction via space.Based on the connection between the author’s spatial experience and imagination,the author’s fictional identity and belonging are demonstrated through the author’s experience,reflection,and reconstruction of the spatial context.Hemingway enters into the literary space through the characters of his fiction,redefines their relationship with space,intervenes in or alienates himself from a certain space in his work to choose his own identity,and in this way interacts with and defines the fictional characters.Firstly,Hemingway,as a “world citizen”,seeks spiritual belonging in transnational space,and is influenced by local space,foreign space,and the compound space of travel and war,and appears in the foreground or background space of the fictional stories.Secondly,Hemingway,as a prominent “journalist” in public space,creates roles of journalists accordingly in the construction of public space in his fiction by spreading information,creating the atmosphere of freedom,and demonstrating the power of public opinion.Finally,Hemingway,as a code hero in the space of crisis,presents his tough spirit in the fictional spaces of fishing,hunting,battlefield,and other dire situations.This self-transcendence process is related to the spatial environment in Hemingway’s fiction to overcome the spatial dilemma.Hemingway’s fiction reflects and reconstructs the basic elements of world space.His literary space,constructed through the representation,the imitation,the reference and the transformation of the world in the early twentieth century,could be summarized in four basic aspects of living,namely,the spaces of medicine,food,residence,and transportation.First of all,the space of medical treatment in Hemingway’s fiction not only presents the value of modern medicine in treating the sick and saving people,but also restricts,oppresses,and even destroys people’s bodies and souls.In the face of the limitations of medical space,the only way to break through the barriers and to realize spiritual transcendence is the cultivation of love,which is the shared emotion of human beings.Secondly,Hemingway’s fiction constructs multi-level spaces of food: From a micro view,the packaging or cooking space for food compresses the emotional state of the characters;from a middle-level view,the specific location of the food and beverage has become an indispensable space for his characters to interact with one another;and from a macro view,the integration of food and beverage cultures in different regions demonstrates the spatial flow of globalization,which,with the characteristics of colonialism,is dominated by the oppression and the pillage imposed by the western cultures on the less advantaged cultures.Furthermore,the residential chronotopes of three age groups in Hemingway’s fiction,namely,teenagers,adults and the elderly,reflect why his characters choose to wander,how they sustain their wanderings,and ultimately,where their destinations would be.Finally,the airplanes,trains,automobiles,ships,and other means of transportation in Hemingway’s fiction serve as the medium of spatial mobility,revealing the paradox of freedom and death,the contradiction of intimacy and alienation,the confusion of independence and disorientation,and the pain of desire and disillusionment in the dilemma of modernity.The living spaces characterized by instrumental rationality in Hemingway’s writing warn that people would fall into the predicament of modernity if they,as modern society progresses,ignore the emotional bond among people to go after unlimited desires.Therefore,the spatial world constructed in Hemingway’s fiction,with “medicine”,“food”,“residence”,and “transportation” as the basic elements,is a comprehensive exploration of the space in which modern Westerners live,as well as their spiritual encounters,in the early twentieth century.The text of Hemingway’s fiction is created with masterful techniques of spatial narration.With text as its core,the spatial techniques of Hemingway’s fiction could be reviewed under the category of spatial narratology through three perspectives,namely,the spatial narrative techniques of the discourse structure,the story time,and the spatial bond between characters and geographical spaces.Firstly,Hemingway’s narrative discourse is characterized by spatial structures,including narratives in the spatial structures of “theme and juxtaposition”,“core and petals”,and “Chinese boxes”.The spatial characteristics of these narrative techniques are combined with the space of the stories,forming a multi-level artistic effect.Secondly,under the perspective of narrative techniques,spatial elements are indispensable links to temporal narratives.In Hemingway’s fiction,the spatial expression of story time is mainly embodied in the three time-related spatial narrative features,namely,space as the sign of temporal flow,as the extension after temporal termination,and as the order of temporal malfunction.Thirdly,Hemingway’s characters have multi-dimensional relationships with geographical space.His fiction utilizes the mapping between spatial imagery of character types and external space to narrate,uses the spatial attributes of the bodies of its characters to reflect the spatial expansion of the characters’ natures,and takes the spatial mapping under the perspective of his characters’ identities to create geographical connection.The reader reception of Hemingway’s fiction could also be analyzed from a spatial perspective.In Hemingway’s fiction,the role of reader is closely related to space,a factor influenced by his “Iceberg Theory”.As a metaphorical concept with strong spatial characteristics,the “Iceberg Theory” mainly depends on readers’ association and interpretation.In addition,Hemingway’s fiction is deeply influenced by the modernist painting style.His use of color in spatial writing has attributes of plot clues,cognitive metaphors and cultural interactions,conveying cultural meaning of visual effects through the readers’ perception of color.Furthermore,Hemingway attaches great importance to the commercial value of his works,which is meant to maximize the spatial coverage of readers.In order to achieve this purpose,a wide dissemination among readers through publishing channels is needed,which is a means of spatial diffusion of literature.With its reputation as world-renowned literary works,Hemingway’s fiction achieves a significant impact on readers around the globe.Therefore,the three aspects of the “Iceberg Theory”,color perception and international influence reflect the significance of spatial factors on readers’ acceptance of Hemingway’s fiction.To conclude,the spatial issues of Hemingway’s fiction could be comprehensively analyzed in four aspects: the spatial presentation of the author’s identity,the spatial reconstruction of the world of people’s life,the spatial form of literary text,and the spatial characteristics of the readers’ acceptance.Influenced by the drastic change of the global spatial pattern in the twentieth century,Hemingway has spatially reflected the writer’s identity in his fiction,constructed literary worlds with diversified spatial characteristics,and created texts with various spatial narrative techniques.Finally,the meaning of his fiction is completed through readers’ spatial experience and is spread to readers all over the world,closing the study of space from the writer,to the world,to the text,and then to the readers.Based on the influence and progress of the “spatial turn”,the comprehensive spatial theories fully explain the spatial issues of Hemingway’s fiction in the four basic dimensions: the writer,the world,the text and the readers,indicating that the space of Hemingway’s fiction is where reality and imagination interact,where crisis and hope coexist,and where cultures and classes collide.The spatial perspectives organically combine the internal factors of Hemingway’s fiction,such as plot construction and narrative techniques,with its external influence,such as the author’s experience and the readers’ acceptance,providing new practical perspectives and theoretical connotations for the study on Hemingway’s fiction. |
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