Based on field research conducted in Spain in June 2013, this article investigates some of the historical context for The Spanish Earth . The first section explores the film-related locations of Madrid, Morata de Tajuña, and Fuentidueña de Tajo through site visits and local interviews. The gathered information both expands and corrects what the author presented in Hemingway’s Second War (2011). The second section provides commentary. The article aims to better equip others in drawing more informed conclusions in situating The Spanish Earth within nonfiction theory, the documentary and war film tradition, and Hemingway’s experience of and writings about the war.
Hemingway's war experiences contributed enormously and essentially to his sense of gender (however confused) such that studies of either war or gender in his life and work ought to consider the other. Cultural-historic constructions of the war-gender relationship very much informed Hemingway's own sensibilities and thus his fiction. Even in his work not directly about war, we should be able to read the war's presence through textual performances of gender. Texts the essay considers include "Big Two-Hearted River," A Farewell to Arms , "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," "Cross-Country Snow," and "An Alpine Idyll."
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