May 2014
Project Title: Coming of Age in a Lost Generation: Nick Adams, Ernest Hemingway, and the
American Bildungsroman Tradition.
Adam Cruz
Faculty Mentor: Hal Bush
May 2014
Signature:
Project Proposal:
For my project, I will be exploring Ernest Hemingway and his influence on the American
bildungsroman tradition. Though the bildungsroman is novel-centric in its German origin,
through his short stories and memoirs Hemingway’s work is in line with much of the school’s
tradition. In 18th century Germany, the term Bildungsroman re-defined itself as the development
and maturation of a person into what they are “destined to become” through “interaction with the
environment” (Kontje 2). Though there are two or three principal elements consistent in almost
all bildung stories (Buckley 18), the genre has changed over time, with an author’s own
experiences playing a big part in their work. The first part of my paper will briefly focus on
defining the bildungsroman as a genre, from its German origins to the American bildungsroman
tradition, which was greatly influenced by Mark Twain—who Hemingway himself proclaimed
as the father of American literature (Trites 144). By looking at Twain’s works, particularly
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I will create a context to review Hemingway’s work within the
bildungsroman framework.
From there, I will narrow my scope to Hemingway, who Gertrude Stein described as the
voice of “the lost generation” (Hemingway 30). Through his own experiences, Hemingway
created his own version of bildung tradition, deviating from previous coming of age works.
Because bildungsroman work is “autobiographical…with fact and fiction inextricably
intermingled” (Buckley 24), I will engage two primary sources in my study of Hemingway’s
bildungsroman, one written at the beginning of his career, the other at the twilight: the Nick
Adams’ short stories in the collection In Our Time (1925), and Hemingway’s account of his own
coming of age story in the posthumous A Moveable Feast (1964). Through Adams’ coming of
age, who’s seen as fictional version of Hemingway’s own self (Lingeman), I will connect
Hemingway’s work to the previous traditions of the genre, looking at how Adams fits into
coming of age. By connecting Hemingway and Adams, and linking Adams to bildungsroman, I
will show how Hemingway’s work was influenced by his own experiences and how his fiction
operated under the principles necessary for a work to be considered “Coming of Age.”
I will argue that Hemingway, because of his own experiences and the cultural context in
which he wrote, created a “Lost Generation Bildungsroman.” Hemingway’s version, coming out
of the horror of World War I, emphasized trauma and recovery in moving from childhood to
adulthood. By comparing the Nick Adams post-war short story, “Big Two-Hearted River” with A
Moveable Feast, Hemingway’s own tale of post-war adjustment written 40 years later, I will
consider how Hemingway depicted trauma in his bildungsroman. In both accounts, Hemingway
proposed a way to move past the trauma: craft or spiritual practice—both as a fisherman and a
writer—which can aid the traumatized victims of war in finding peace and maturing into the next
phase of life.
Preliminary Works Cited
Baker, Carlos. Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969. Print.
Buckley, Jerome H. Seasons of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Boston:
Harvard UP, 1974. Print.
Gottfried, Marianne H., and David H. Miles. "Defining Bildungsroman as a Genre." PMLA 91.1
(1976): 122-23. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.
Hannum, Howard. ""Scared Sick Looking at It": A Reading of Nick Adams in the Published
Stories." Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (2001): 92-113. JSTOR. Web. 14 Nov. 2013.
Hemingway, Ernest. "In Our Time." The Short Stories. New York: First Scribner Classics, 1997.
92-214. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. The Nick Adams Stories. New York: Scribner, 1972. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Print.
Kontje, Todd. "Bildung and the German Novel." The German Bildungsroman: History of a
National Genre. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993. 1-8. Print.
Lingeman, Richard R. "More Posthumous Hemingway." The New York Times 25 Apr. 1972:
Web.
Rishoi, Christy. "Identity and the Coming of Age Narrative." From Girl to Woman: American
Women's Coming-of-Age Narratives. New York: SUNY, 2003. 1-23. Print.
Rivot, Earl. Ernest Hemingway. New Haven, Conn.: Twayne, 1963. Print.
Tavernier-Courbin, Jacqueline. Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast: The Making of a Myth.
Boston: Northeastern UP, 1991. Print.
Trites, Roberta S. Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel. Iowa City:
University of Iowa, 2007. Print.