Abstract

Abstract:

“Retrospective Radicalism” argues that when Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is deeply historicized, its embedded political allegory becomes visible. The submerged part of the text’s “iceberg” includes the years 1918–1929, when the possibility for a left revolution in Italy was defeated by the consolidation of fascism. Hemingway’s political radicalism is expressed in Farewell’s references to Turin, Rome, Imola, and the Abruzzo, the vampirism of finance capital, and the problematic neutrality of a “separate peace.” Underlying this analysis is a rehistoricization of Hemingway’s role as a Red Cross volunteer in defeating the very revolution he later claimed to have desired, signaled by the novel’s closing with the death of the baby.

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