An Uncanny Genealogy: Agassiz, Roosevelt, and Pound

Abstract

This chapter maps the influence of a series of naturalist father figures (Agassiz, Roosevelt, and Pound) on Hemingway’s developing identity and art. Inquiry assesses the extent to which Hemingway’s aesthetic ideology is shaped by the scientific exactitude, realist mode of meaning making, and anti-literary epistemology that characterizes the writings of these father figures. Analysis also casts a fresh light on Hemingway’s relationships to Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, reading these relationships through the lens of Agassiz’s influence on all three. Critical focus then shifts to Hemingway’s rupture with this naturalist-literary tradition (and with Roosevelt in particular), and to his radical reinvention of it under the sign of The Uncanny.