The lineage of 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
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 1899 follow this thread
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot 1922 follow this thread

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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

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

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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

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

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

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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

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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The Sun Also Rises

Where it came from

The Great Gatsby

What it handed down

To The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Where it came from

Satyricon

What it handed down

To The Great Gatsby (1925)

To The Waste Land

Where it came from

The Odyssey

What it handed down

To Satyricon (c. 60 CE)

To The Aeneid

To Argonautica

Where it came from

The Iliad

What it handed down

To The Aeneid

To The Odyssey (c. 725 BCE)

Where it came from

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