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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 20, 2008 11:37:28 GMT -6
If possible, I would like everyone to read the paper "Ernest Hemingway's Morality in Action" by James Colvert. It is in the handouts folder, called "colvert.pdf", and is a pretty interesting examination of the consequences of critical review of Hemingway's hero theory. Pay particular attention to pages 374 and 375, in their analysis of Krebs. Thank you very much. Here is a direct link just in case you need it.
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King John
King of Talossa
Posts: 2,415
Talossan Since: 5-7-2005
Knight Since: 11-30-2005
Motto: COR UNUM
King Since: 3-14-2007
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Post by King John on Apr 22, 2008 11:01:29 GMT -6
I enjoyed reading this paper, but I think Colvert may be telling us more about HIS attitude toward morality, rationality, and emotion than about HEMINGWAY's (or Hemingway's heroes').
Colvert says that Hemingway's heroes are trying to find a "new morality" to replace the old Victorian morality that no longer works for modern man, a failure Colvert seems to blame on 1) the experience of warfare, and 2) the new "scientific" approach to reality. The old morality, based on thought, falls before the new morality of feeling and emotion.
This strikes me as a trivial approach to morality as well as to scientific and social history, and a trivial approach to Hemingway, who (whatever we think about him) is a bit more subtle and complex than "Thinking Bad, Feeling Good". If morality, in Colvert or in Hemingway, is to be based simply on how we feel about things, well, that's no guide at all to how to act, because (first) our feelings about actions are unpredictable, unstable, change swiftly, and often have little to do with the genuine character of the action, because (second) you can't argue with feelings (de gustibus non disputandum) and a feeling-based morality is necessarily unsharable, and because (third, and most important) such a morality necessarily forces us into the very short-term approach to assessing and planning our behaviour that characterizes childhood. Sure, something may feel good now, and may make me even feel "good about myself" for a while; but a mature person considers (also) how he'll feel about it in a few years, in a few decades, at the end of his life, and perhaps even after his life in this world is over — none of which considerations Colvert's version of the morality of a "Hemingway hero" would seem to take into account.
Consider what would be the level of Hemingway's contempt for someone who was a bad shot with a rifle, but didn't care, and thoroughly enjoyed potting away ineffectually with it (occasionally bringing down an animal at fairly close range), and felt great about his own shooting. Or how he would dismiss a surgeon who liked to do surgery, and felt wonderful about himself, but consistently killed his patients. Hemingway wants surgeons and riflemen (and generals and bullfighters and fishermen and historians and writers and and and) who can do what they do accurately and well. He values expertise, the exact and precise relation and assessment of things as they are; which, of course, may or may not correspond to how we feel about those things, or how we feel about how we feel about them, or how we feel about some writer writing what he feels we should feel about them.
— John R
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Post by Sir Alexandreu Davinescu on Apr 22, 2008 12:58:40 GMT -6
EXCELLENT discussion this week, John, and EXCELLENT analysis of your feelings about the paper. Very good job already, and talk hasn't even begun!
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