Revisiting the Setting of Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway: A Pastoral Consideration

• Main Authors: Calleb N. Nyamisoa, 倪迦勒
• Other Authors: James B. Rollins
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/28917954533527351943

碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國語文研究所 === 104 === In this thesis, I examine the setting of Green Hills of Africa (1935) by Ernest Hemingway, arguing that the setting gives the story a pastoral impression. I have divided the thesis into two chapters. In the first chapter, I define pastoral. I enlist the help of Paul Alpers who recommends a pastoral be defined under the tenets of representative anecdote and pastoral convention. Furthermore, I suggest that Hemingway’s sojourn in Africa, and subsequent writing about it, is an attempt to mythologize place and is driven by nostalgia. In the second chapter, I discuss how Hemingway revisions the pastoral by utilizing elements that would otherwise not be considered pastoral. Joy Greenberg, while discussing Walden, identifies ritual and paradox as features of the pastoral. I discuss these features in Green Hills of Africa. Finally, I survey ways in which a pastoral reading of the novel contributes to literature. I propose that the pastoral setting of the novel opens avenues for discussing postcolonialism and ecocriticism in a new way. My thesis is to this end informed by Sheng-Yen Yu’s analysis of Waiting for the Barbarians by J. M. Coetzee.