A Study Of "Hemingway's Style"

Literature style is the mysterious yet recognizable result of a successful blending of form with content. It is a characteristic mark made in works that tells one writer from the others. Hemingway's unique content of works and writing style make "Hemingway style" a jargon that implies the exact connotation.But what exactly is "Hemingway's style"? How does it embody in the novels? There are few theses about these.The English novelist HEBates mentioned that Hemingway's writing style aroused the literature revolution in his Hemingway's writing style, but he didn't explain the exact connotation of "Hemingway's style"; Two prominent Chinese scholars Wu Ran and Dong Hengxun put forward the term "Hemingway's style", but Wu Ran attached much importance to the simple but connotive writing style, and Dong Hengxun put that the simple but exquisite writing style is one important part of "Hemingway's style". American scholar Leon Edel and Philip Young illuminated "Hemingway's style" in the angles of form and content in their respective papers The art of evasion and Earnest Hemingway: a reconsideration, but they failed to give any examples to elaborate it.So in a word, these explanations and analyses about "Hemingway's style" are neither accurate nor systematic. Even though there are a lot of studies about Hemingway's works in China and other countries that are mainly document study,biographic works,influence study,general study and study of single works, only several scholars write papers on general style of Hemingway's writing. And in the general study of Hemingway's novels, there are relatively fewer studies about "Hemingway's style". And these several theses are not thorough or detailed enough such as the paper written by Zhang Runping:A study of connotation and causes of "Hemingway's style.This thesis is devoted to defining "Hemingway's style", to exploring it wholly and elaborating it by taking Hemingway's short story The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber as an example. And some comments on "Hemingway's style" and reasons why this style comes into being are also given in this thesis. The studying methods of this thesis are text reading,Female Criticism and social-historic criticism and psychoanalysis criticism, etc.The paper is divided into four parts.The first part: Selection of material and themes—that mainly deals with Hemingway's persistent selection of material and themes. Hemingway's works are mainly about battles,boxing,bullfighting,hunting and fishing. And by describing these activities, Hemingway expresses repeatedly four themes—love,loneliness,death and struggle.The second part:Characters—that elucidates the typical characters. In Hemingway's novels, the characters can be devided into two groups—male and female. The male characters are those fearless "cold heroes" who are not afraid of death and can keep dignity in face of death. Although these heroes might finally be defeated, they have showed "grace under pressure". But at the same time,these "cold heroes" act like a coward once in a while; The female characters in Hemingway's works always serve as a contrast or foil. They are either "angels" or "monsters".The third part: Writing style—that mainly tells the basic features of Hemingway's language,literature representation and writing techniques. Hemingway's writng style shows in five aspects: "telegraph-like" dialogue,simple but expressive depiction of scenery,indirect psychologic description,visual angle of narration and rhetoric such as symbolism and irony. These five aspects work together to form the influential "Hemingway's writing style".The forth part: causes of "Hemingway's style"—Some analyses are provided to tell how the style forms in the angle of Hemingway's growth,life experience and living times. Hemingway's "cold Heroes" sometime act cowardly. In fact, this is the very Hemingway, who has double character;Hemingway's life experiece caused him not to break away from obsession of death, so that he developed his particular "death complex"; The specific living times and personal experience made Hemingway have his own Consciousness of women; Hemingway formed his unique writing style --"principle of iceberg" with the help of the conventional literature,impressionism painters and journalistic experience.