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: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg 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

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, Tender is 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 Tender is the Night are more evident than those of Gatsby – most notably, Dick’s marriage to Nicole resembles …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2812 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Tender is the Night". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 September 2006 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1685, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Save this article