The influences behind The Sun Also Rises

1926

The Sun Also Rises

Ernest Hemingway

Lost Generation. Paris / United States. Written in English.

Hemingway's first novel (1926) follows Jake Barnes, an American journalist left impotent by a war wound, and the expatriates around Lady Brett Ashley from the cafes of Paris to the fishing streams of Burguete and the bullfights at Pamplona. Its title and epigraph come from Ecclesiastes, and its spare, repetitive prose draws on Gertrude Stein.

Where it came from

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1925

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Jazz Age. United States / France. Written in English.

Nick Carraway narrates the rise and fall of Jay Gatsby, a bootlegger who throws lavish parties on Long Island to win back Daisy Buchanan.

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Structural model, probable.

Hemingway met Fitzgerald in May 1925 and read Gatsby that summer, just as he began drafting his novel. Both books use a first-person narrator who is a participant and onlooker at a doomed romantic obsession among the rich and idle. Fitzgerald later read the typescript and his letter persuaded Hemingway to cut the opening pages.

Where it came from

Satyricon, Petronius c. 60 CE follow this thread
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 1899 follow this thread
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot 1922 follow this thread

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1922

The Waste Land

T. S. Eliot

High Modernism. London. Written in English.

A five-part poem of fragments and quotations portraying a sterile postwar Europe through the myth of a wounded king and a parched land.

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Jake's war wound, which leaves him unable to consummate his love, has been widely read as a version of Eliot's wounded Fisher King presiding over a sterile postwar world. The fishing trip to Burguete and the drinking, aimless society of the novel answer the poem's imagery of drought and spiritual exhaustion. Hemingway disparaged Eliot in print, so the debt is one of shared material rather than avowed discipleship.

To The Great Gatsby (1925)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

The 'valley of ashes' between West Egg and New York, watched over by the billboard eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg, adapts Eliot's landscape of dust and spiritual emptiness. Fitzgerald admired the poem and sent Eliot a copy of the novel, which Eliot praised in a letter.

Where it came from

Satyricon, Petronius c. 60 CE follow this thread
Ecclesiastes (Qohelet), Anonymous (attributed to Solomon) c. 3rd century BCE follow this thread
Perceval, the Story of the Grail, Chretien de Troyes c. 1190 follow this thread

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1909

Three Lives

Gertrude Stein

Early Modernism. Paris. Written in English.

Three novellas about working women in a Baltimore-like city, 'The Good Anna', 'Melanctha' and 'The Gentle Lena', written in a repetitive, simplified prose.

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Hemingway studied Stein's prose in Paris from 1922, admired 'Melanctha', and helped publish her work in the transatlantic review. Three Lives showed him how flat repetition, a small vocabulary and rhythmic dialogue could carry feeling beneath the surface. The circling, repeated exchanges between Jake and Brett use this method.

Where it came from

Three Tales (Trois Contes), Gustave Flaubert 1877 follow this thread

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1899

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

Late Victorian. England. Written in English.

Marlow tells fellow sailors on the Thames of his journey up the Congo River to find the ivory agent Kurtz.

What it handed down

To The Great Gatsby (1925)

Structural model, well documented.

Fitzgerald said he learned his method from Conrad. Nick Carraway, like Marlow, tells the story of a magnetic, obsessive man he only partly understands and reaches his own judgment as he narrates.

Where it came from

Inferno, Dante Alighieri c. 1314 follow this thread
The Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread

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1885

The Purple Land

W. H. Hudson

Late Victorian. England. Written in English.

The romantic adventures and love affairs of a young Englishman, Richard Lamb, wandering through civil-war Uruguay.

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Direct source, well documented.

In the first chapter Jake explains that Robert Cohn has been reading The Purple Land, 'a very sinister book if read too late in life', and takes its romantic adventures as a guide to life. Hudson's novel is the source of Cohn's wish to go to South America and of the chivalric illusions that make him absurd at Pamplona.

Where it came from

The line stops here: hudson drew mainly on his own youth in Argentina and travels in the Banda Oriental, not on a traceable literary model.

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1877

Three Tales (Trois Contes)

Gustave Flaubert

French Realism. France. Written in French.

Three stories: 'A Simple Heart', about the servant Felicite; 'The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller'; and 'Herodias', on the death of John the Baptist.

What it handed down

To Three Lives (1909)

Structural model, well documented.

Stein began Three Lives while translating Flaubert's Trois Contes at her brother Leo's suggestion. 'The Good Anna' is modeled on 'A Simple Heart', the life of a devoted servant woman, and the book borrows Flaubert's design of three linked portraits.

Where it came from

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The King James BibleTranslation committee under James I

1611

The King James Bible (Authorized Version)

Translation committee under James I

Jacobean. England. Written in English.

The English Bible translation authorized for the Church of England, a revision of earlier English Bibles checked against Hebrew and Greek texts.

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Direct source, well documented.

The novel takes its title and one of its two epigraphs from Ecclesiastes 1:4-7 in King James wording: 'One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh... The sun also ariseth.' Hemingway set this beside Stein's 'You are all a lost generation' to answer her, and said the abiding earth was the book's hero. The plain, cadenced English of the passage matches the prose of the novel.

Where it came from

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The Coverdale BibleMyles Coverdale

1535

The Coverdale Bible

Myles Coverdale

Reformation. England / Antwerp. Written in English.

The first complete printed Bible in English, combining Tyndale's work with Coverdale's translations from Latin and German.

What it handed down

To The King James Bible (Authorized Version) (1611)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

The King James revisers were instructed to follow the Bishops' Bible, which descended through the Great Bible from Coverdale's 1535 translation. Coverdale's Old Testament phrasing, including much of the wisdom books, passed into the Authorized Version through this chain of revisions.

Where it came from

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1526

The New Testament (Tyndale's translation)

William Tyndale

Reformation. England / Worms. Written in English.

The first printed English New Testament, translated from Erasmus's Greek text.

What it handed down

To The King James Bible (Authorized Version) (1611)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

A large majority of the King James New Testament keeps Tyndale's wording, as textual comparisons have shown. His short Anglo-Saxon words and plain syntax set the register of English scripture.

To The Coverdale Bible (1535)

Direct source, well documented.

Coverdale incorporated Tyndale's New Testament, lightly revised, into the first complete English Bible. This put Tyndale's language into the line of official English Bibles.

Where it came from

The Gospel of Mark, Anonymous (attributed to Mark) c. 70 CE follow this thread

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c. 1314

Inferno

Dante Alighieri

Late Middle Ages. Italy (in exile from Florence). Written in Italian.

The first part of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante, guided by Virgil, descends through the nine circles of Hell.

What it handed down

To Heart of Darkness (1899)

Disputed link, probable.

Critics have compared the grove of dying workers and the stations along the river to Dante's circles of Hell, with Marlow as a pilgrim descending toward Kurtz at the center. The resemblance is often noted but remains an interpretation, not a documented borrowing.

Where it came from

Metamorphoses, Ovid 8 CE follow this thread
The Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread
The Vulgate, Jerome c. 405 follow this thread

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c. 1260

The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea)

Jacobus de Voragine

High Middle Ages. Genoa, Italy. Written in Latin.

A collection of saints' lives and feast-day readings arranged by the church year, including the legend of Julian the Hospitaller.

What it handed down

To Three Tales (Trois Contes) (1877)

Direct source, probable.

'Saint Julian the Hospitaller' retells the medieval legend of the nobleman who kills his parents by mistake and atones by serving lepers, which the Golden Legend made standard. Flaubert ends the tale by crediting a stained-glass window in a church of his region, itself a picture of this legend.

Where it came from

The Vulgate, Jerome c. 405 follow this thread

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c. 1190

Perceval, the Story of the Grail

Chretien de Troyes

High Middle Ages. Northern France (Flanders court). Written in Old French.

An unfinished verse romance in which the naive knight Perceval visits the castle of the wounded Fisher King and fails to ask about the Grail.

What it handed down

To The Waste Land (1922)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Chretien's Perceval is the earliest surviving story of the Grail, the wounded Fisher King and his ruined land. Eliot took the poem's title, its fishing king and its chapel perilous from the Grail legend, which he said he had studied through Jessie Weston's account of it.

Where it came from

Roman de Brut, Wace 1155 follow this thread

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Roman de BrutWace

1155

Roman de Brut

Wace

Anglo-Norman. Normandy / England. Written in Anglo-Norman French.

A verse chronicle of British history from Brutus to Cadwallader, adapting Geoffrey of Monmouth and introducing the Round Table.

What it handed down

To Perceval, the Story of the Grail (c. 1190)

Thematic kinship, probable.

Wace's chronicle established Arthur's court, its knights and the Round Table in French verse a generation before Chretien. Chretien's romances, including Perceval, take that court as the fixed setting from which their knights set out.

Where it came from

The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), Geoffrey of Monmouth c. 1136 follow this thread

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c. 1136

The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae)

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Anglo-Norman. England. Written in Latin.

A pseudo-history of Britain from its founding by Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, through the reign of King Arthur.

What it handed down

To Roman de Brut (1155)

Direct source, well documented.

The Roman de Brut is a free verse translation of Geoffrey's Latin History into Anglo-Norman French. Wace follows Geoffrey's sequence of kings, adding details such as the Round Table.

Where it came from

Historia Brittonum, Anonymous (attributed to Nennius) c. 829 follow this thread

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c. 829

Historia Brittonum

Anonymous (attributed to Nennius)

Early Middle Ages. Wales. Written in Latin.

A compilation of British history and legend that traces the Britons to Brutus of Troy and lists Arthur's twelve battles.

What it handed down

To The History of the Kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae) (c. 1136)

Direct source, well documented.

Geoffrey took from the Historia Brittonum the story of Brutus, the Trojan founder of Britain, and the list of Arthur's battles. He expanded these brief notices into a full narrative history.

Where it came from

The Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread

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The VulgateJerome

c. 405

The Vulgate

Jerome

Late Antiquity. Bethlehem and Rome. Written in Latin.

Jerome's Latin Bible, translating the Old Testament from Hebrew and revising the Old Latin Gospels; the standard Bible of the Western Church for a thousand years.

What it handed down

To The Coverdale Bible (1535)

Direct source, well documented.

Coverdale did not work from Hebrew; for the books Tyndale had not translated he relied on the Latin Vulgate and later Latin versions, together with Luther's and the Zurich German Bibles. His Ecclesiastes is therefore partly a translation of Jerome's Latin.

To Inferno (c. 1314)

Thematic kinship, well documented.

Dante knew scripture in Jerome's Latin, and the moral order of the Commedia rests on it. Biblical figures, the harrowing of Hell and Latin scriptural echoes run through the poem.

To The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea) (c. 1260)

Direct source, probable.

Jacobus built his readings for the feasts of Christ, Mary and the apostles on the Latin text of the Vulgate, quoting it throughout. The scriptural frame of the church year organizes the whole collection.

Where it came from

The Gospel of Mark, Anonymous (attributed to Mark) c. 70 CE follow this thread
Ecclesiastes (Qohelet), Anonymous (attributed to Solomon) c. 3rd century BCE follow this thread

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The Gospel of MarkAnonymous

c. 70 CE

The Gospel of Mark

Anonymous (attributed to Mark)

Early Christian. Roman Empire. Written in Koine Greek.

The earliest surviving gospel, a terse account of the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus, including the beheading of John the Baptist.

What it handed down

To Three Tales (Trois Contes) (1877)

Direct source, well documented.

'Herodias' expands the account in Mark 6:14-29 of Herod's feast, Salome's dance and the beheading of John the Baptist. Flaubert supplied historical detail but kept the gospel's sequence of events.

To The New Testament (Tyndale's translation) (1526)

Direct source, well documented.

Tyndale translated Mark and the other Gospels from Erasmus's printed Greek text rather than from the Latin. His English Mark keeps the abrupt, paratactic 'and... and' storytelling of the Greek.

To The Vulgate (c. 405)

Direct source, well documented.

At Pope Damasus's request Jerome revised the Old Latin Gospels against Greek manuscripts around 383. His Latin Mark became part of the Vulgate.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 60 CE

Satyricon

Petronius

Neronian Rome. Imperial Rome. Written in Latin.

A fragmentary comic novel in prose and verse following the misadventures of Encolpius, including the banquet of the vulgar freedman Trimalchio.

What it handed down

To The Great Gatsby (1925)

Direct source, well documented.

Fitzgerald's working titles included 'Trimalchio' and 'Trimalchio in West Egg', and the novel says that when the parties stop, Gatsby's 'career as Trimalchio was over'. Petronius's newly rich host of vulgar banquets is the model for Gatsby's parties.

To The Waste Land (1922)

Direct source, well documented.

The poem's epigraph comes from Trimalchio's banquet in the Satyricon: the Sibyl of Cumae, hanging in a jar, answers boys who ask what she wants, 'I want to die.' Eliot uses this image of withered, endless life to open his poem of a dying civilization.

Where it came from

The Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread
The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread

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8 CE

Metamorphoses

Ovid

Augustan. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

A fifteen-book poem of transformation myths running from the creation of the world to the deification of Julius Caesar.

What it handed down

To Inferno (c. 1314)

Direct source, well documented.

Ovid is among the great poets Dante meets in Limbo in Canto 4. In Canto 25 Dante tells Ovid to be silent about Cadmus and Arethusa because his own transformations of thieves into serpents surpass them.

Where it came from

The Aeneid, Virgil 19 BCE follow this thread

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19 BCE

The Aeneid

Virgil

Augustan. Augustan Rome. Written in Latin.

Virgil's epic of the Trojan Aeneas's flight from burning Troy, his love affair with Dido, his descent to the underworld and his war in Italy.

What it handed down

To Heart of Darkness (1899)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Some critics have read Marlow's journey upriver as a descent to the underworld on the model of Aeneas's in Aeneid Book 6, with the knitting women at the Company office as guardians of the threshold. Conrad left no statement confirming the parallel.

To Inferno (c. 1314)

Direct source, well documented.

Dante makes Virgil his guide through Hell and calls him his master and author. Charon, the river crossings and the geography of the dead come from Aeneas's descent in Aeneid Book 6.

To Historia Brittonum (c. 829)

Thematic kinship, probable.

The Historia Brittonum makes Brutus a descendant of Aeneas and links British origins to the Trojan diaspora that Virgil's epic made famous. The Trojan genealogy borrows its authority from the Aeneid's story of Rome's founding.

To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

The poet Eumolpus recites the 'Troiae Halosis', a verse account of the fall of Troy that reworks Aeneid Book 2. Petronius uses Virgil's epic material for comic and critical effect in a low setting.

To Metamorphoses (8 CE)

Direct source, well documented.

Books 13 and 14 of the Metamorphoses retell Aeneas's voyage from Troy to Italy, a compressed 'little Aeneid' in which Ovid passes quickly over Virgil's set pieces. Ovid's epic is written in deliberate competition with Virgil's.

Where it came from

Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes c. 250 BCE follow this thread
The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread
The Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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c. 250 BCE

Argonautica

Apollonius of Rhodes

Hellenistic. Alexandria. Written in Ancient Greek.

A Hellenistic epic of Jason's voyage for the Golden Fleece and Medea's love for him.

What it handed down

To The Aeneid (19 BCE)

Direct source, well documented.

Dido's love for Aeneas in Book 4 is modeled on Medea's love for Jason in Argonautica Book 3, as the ancient commentator Servius observed. Virgil took from Apollonius the close psychological portrait of a woman consumed by passion.

Where it came from

The Odyssey, Homer c. 725 BCE follow this thread

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EcclesiastesAnonymous

c. 3rd century BCE

Ecclesiastes (Qohelet)

Anonymous (attributed to Solomon)

Persian or Hellenistic period. Judea. Written in Hebrew.

A book of Hebrew wisdom literature in which the Preacher reflects on the vanity of human effort against the endless cycles of nature.

What it handed down

To The Waste Land (1922)

Direct source, well documented.

Eliot's note to line 23 ('the cricket no relief') directs readers to Ecclesiastes 12:5, the Preacher's picture of old age when 'the grasshopper shall be a burden'. The poem's dry stones and absent water echo that chapter's imagery of decay.

To The King James Bible (Authorized Version) (1611)

Direct source, well documented.

The King James translators rendered Ecclesiastes from the Hebrew Masoretic text, producing the verses about the sun rising and the generations passing that Hemingway quoted. Their English kept the parallel, repetitive structure of the Hebrew.

To The Vulgate (c. 405)

Direct source, well documented.

Jerome translated Ecclesiastes directly from Hebrew around 398 and had earlier written a commentary on it. His Latin version became the text through which the medieval West knew the book.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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c. 725 BCE

The Odyssey

Homer

Archaic Greece. Ionia. Written in Ancient Greek.

The epic of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home from Troy, pursued by the anger of Poseidon, including his descent to the dead.

What it handed down

To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

Structural model, probable.

Encolpius is hounded by the wrath of Priapus as Odysseus is hounded by Poseidon, and the novel names a seductress Circe and has its hero call himself Polyaenus, a Homeric epithet of Odysseus. Many scholars read the whole work as a low parody of the Odyssey.

To The Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The first six books of the Aeneid follow the Odyssey's pattern of sea wanderings, a hero's tale told at a foreign court and a visit to the dead. Virgil also borrows specific episodes such as the Cyclops and the passage past Scylla and Charybdis.

To Argonautica (c. 250 BCE)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Apollonius wrote in Homeric hexameters and diction, and his sea voyage past monsters and enchantresses reworks Odyssean episodes. He often varies or comments on rare Homeric words.

Where it came from

The Iliad, Homer c. 750 BCE follow this thread

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c. 750 BCE

The Iliad

Homer

Archaic Greece. Ionia. Written in Ancient Greek.

The epic of the wrath of Achilles during the tenth year of the Trojan War.

What it handed down

To The Aeneid (19 BCE)

Structural model, well documented.

The last six books of the Aeneid are Virgil's Iliad, a war in Italy with funeral games, a slain young comrade and a final duel. Aeneas's killing of Turnus answers Achilles's killing of Hector.

To The Odyssey (c. 725 BCE)

Thematic kinship, probable.

The Odyssey presupposes the Trojan War of the Iliad: the bard Demodocus sings of Troy, and Odysseus meets the shades of Achilles and Agamemnon. Its audience is assumed to know the earlier epic's heroes.

Where it came from

This is one of the oldest surviving works in its tradition; the line ends here.

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