The Torments of Spring
Jake Barnes’s Phantom Limb in The Sun Also Rises
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 15014372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Anesko (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 52-69 |
| Publication date | 2015-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Literature and medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0278-9671 • E-ISSN: 1080-6571 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/lm.2015.0008 |
| PMID | 26095840 |
| OpenAlex | W1531196818 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
While critics recently have found The Sun Also Rises a fruitful text for reexamining issues of gender and sexuality in Hemingway’s work, a significant aspect of Jake Barnes’s genital wounding has been overlooked. At least from the time of the American Civil War, a diverse body of medical literature has documented the psychosomatic reality of phantom genitalia in traumatically injured men. Revisiting the novel from this perspective—imagining that Jake Barnes is haunted by a penile ghost—allows us to see this character as something more than a victim of disability. Instead, we might think of Jake’s material self as figuratively masculine but accidentally transgendered: a body that others can desire and that still can choose, or not, to reciprocate sexual feeling
Aesthetics · Art · Feeling · Human sexuality · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Visual arts · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Culture · Gender Studies · Literature, Film, and Journalism Analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Highly cited | No |
|---|