What is it about?
Readers of "A Canary for One" have so far mostly referred to Henry James and his Daisy Miller as a defining influence in Hemingway's short story. Certain features of the text that have caused confusion in the past make sense when the influence of Little Dorrit is taken into consideration.
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Why is it important?
This influence of Charles Dickens's novel has so far been undetected. It resolves a "mystery" that critics of the story mentioned in the past and contributes to strengthening the perception that Hemingway was not just a modernist author who created "simple" text but that he was also well-read and enjoyed literary allusions that he concealed quite effectively.
Perspectives
"A Canary for One" has always been one of my favourite stories to teach because it demonstrates beautifully how much closer this genre is to the lyrical poem rather than to the novel. Every word in the story counts, is set down with care and the last sentence usually surprises first-time readers as it catches them unaware and sends them back on a quest to find instances of foreshadowing in the text (there are plenty of these). Hence, I was extremely pleased when I discovered the parallels in Little Dorrit. The short article that is the result of my discovery when - at last - I found the time to write it, will hopefully find an audience amongst Hemingway readers that have also wondered about certain passages in the story, very much like myself.
Prof. Dr. Michael C. Prusse
Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Echoes of Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Canary for One”, ANQ A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles Notes and Reviews, February 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/0895769x.2018.1434606.
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