Teaching Hemingway and the Natural World

Ernest Hemingway is a writer we often associate with particular places and animals; Michigans Upper Peninsula, Spains countryside, East Africas game reserves, Cubas blue water, and Idahos sage- brush all come to mind. We can easily visualize the iconic images of Hemingway with y rod bent by hefty trout, with bulls charging matadors, or of the famous author proudly posing with trophy lions, marlin, and a menagerie of Western American game animals. As Robert E. Fleming once put itupdating Gertrude Steins famous quip that Hemingway looked like a modern and smelled of museumsHemingway was also a hunter, sherman, and naturalist who smelled of libraries. Hemingway indeed read widely in natural history and science, as well as the literature of eld sports. is lifelong interest in the natural world and its inhabitants manifests itself in Hemingways writing in myriad ways. From the trout Nick Adams care- fully releases to Santiagos marlin and Robert Jordans heart beating against the pine needle oor of the forest to Colonel Cantwells beloved Italian duck marshes, and from African savannahs to the Gulf Stream, animals and environments are central to Hemingways work and life. While these representations often served as background for broader human centered matters in early scholarship, contemporary critics have opted to treat animals and environments directly. Teaching Hemingway and the Natural World marks a key entry in Hemingway studies, bringing the questions from the rapidly evolving eld of environmental literary studies to bear on Hemingways places, animals, and life. It not only advances scholarship on Hemingways relationship to the natural world, but it also facilitates bringing this understanding to the classroom. This latest volume in the Teaching Hemingway series explores how his writing sheds light on broader questions of the human relationship to the nonhuman world. Organized geographically, the 16 essays by leading scholars are divided into five sections about Hemingways favorite places. Each essay includes specific classroom advice as well as theoretically sophisticated close readings.