Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James Phelan

Critical Essay by James Phelan

SOURCE: “Voice, Distance, Temporal Perspective, and the Dynamics of A Farewell to Arms,” in Narrative as Rhetoric: Technique, Audiences, Ethics, Ideology, Ohio State University Press, 1996, pp. 59-84.

In the following essay, Phelan emphasizes the novel's progression in voice which allows Frederic's character to develop gradually into a manifestation of Hemingway's views of the universe.

This chapter builds on the model of voice outlined in the essay on Vanity Fair by deploying it to reexamine Hemingway's famous style in A Farewell to Arms and to offer an account of how voice contributes to the novel's progression. Although I want to claim some originality for my specific analyses, the overarching goal of the first part of the chapter is quite traditional: to show how the technique is working in the service of the narrative's larger effects. Later, however, I expand my focus from voice to the autodiegetic narration more generally and...
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