F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1934

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Tender is the Night

(1934), Scott Fitzgerald’s fourth novel, and the last he completed, appeared nine years after

The Great Gatsby

. More muted than its predecessor,

Tenderis the Night

, which takes its title from Fitzgerald’s favourite poem, John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” (1820), is a subtle, moving study of disintegration focused through the figure of Dick Diver, who moves from success as a brilliant young psychiatrist, through marriage to a beautiful and wealthy schizophrenic, to obscurity as a small-town doctor. The autobiographical aspects of

Tenderis the Night

are more evident than those of

Gatsby

– most notably, Dick’s marriage to Nicole resembles Scott’s marriage to Zelda; but the novel transmutes these components to produce a work of fiction that functions…

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2812 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Tender is the Night". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 September 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1685, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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