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TOPIC 55. THE LOST GENERATION, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmexzAv7sQ…
TOPIC 55. THE LOST GENERATION
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
4 main events led to the lost generation literary production
The
Dust Bowl
= period of
severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture
of the Great Plains during the 1930s.
It influenced writers to explore themes of survival and resilience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QSO2RdBzRc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DCjE-9jkaE
= period in which jazz music and dance styles rapidly gained nationwide popularity in the US due to the introduction of radios nationwide. During this period of time youth culture was developed.
Writers
of the Lost Generation often
depicted
the decadence and
superficiality
of this era, critiquing the
materialism
and
moral decay
they observed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uvNWqCku-I
WW1
: It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history (9M killed) and it left a profound impact on the
writers
of the Lost Generation who reflected the sense of
aimlessness
and moral loss.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3BZGnkCn-M&pp=ygUWcHJpbWVyYSBndWVycmEgbXVuZGlhbA%3D%3D
The
Wall Street Crash of 1929
was the most devastating
collapse
of stock prices. It signalled the beginning of the
Great Depression
, a severe global
economic downturn
marked by poverty and unemployment.
The Lost Generation writers often
addressed
the despair and
hopelessness
of this period, highlighting the
struggles
of ordinary people and critiquing the failures of the American Dream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2jm5Z4AV8&t=218s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62DxELjuRec&pp=ygUaZHVzdCBib3dsIDMgbWludXRlIGhpc3Rvcnk%3D
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
was an American author and screen writer best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the
Jazz age (term he coined in
his collection of short stories titled "
Tales of the Jazz Age
")
His
STYLE
was largely inspired by Joseph Conrad
, employing a narrator's device to unify passing scenes with deeper meaning .
It's characterised by its
lyrical and elegant prose
,
vivid imagery
and keen
social insight
.
had the ability to write a
story
from the first-person perspective that appears
whimsical
and
romantic
while also containing a certain sense of
tragedy
and doom.
He used rethorical devices to convey his message and various
literary allusions
.
His works, such as "
Tender is the Night
", contain autobiographical elements, reflecting Fitzgerald's lifestyle, marriage problems and his wife's mental illness.
His
THEMES
were related to his life, being the central one the corruption and failure of the American Dream
, as well as the false and distorted forms in which that dream exists in the modern world.
As secondary themes one can find illusion vs. reality, wealth, love, youth, maturity, and social stratification.
LIFE
He
frequented Europe
, where he befriended modernist writers and artists of the Lost Gen (including Hemingway)
He
struggled financially
because of the declining popularity of his works amid the Great Depression
so he moved to Hollywood
where he had an unsuccessful career
as a screenwriter
.
2 aspects of his life that influenced his career the most:
his luxurious way of life and his wife's psychiatric problems.
All of this is reflected in his unfinished work published posthumously "
The Last Tycoon"
https://youtu.be/dvf8_m0ezRo?si=4UHmonjLfSaIvSRN
His masterpiece is:
"
The Great Gatsby
": complex structure with a controlled narrative POV. It's set in the jazz age and it depicts the American Dream, as well as the life of the wealthy who idealise love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIXvD3AXz0
REFERENCES
Grlica, T. (2013).
“The Importance of Teaching Literature in a High-School Environment with the Incorporation of Film and Multimedia into the Process"”
.
Bekmuratovich, X. G. (2020). "The Importance of teaching History to Students"
The
American Yawp
The World History
Encyclopedia
Encyclopaedia
Britannica
Levine, R. S. (Ed.). (2022). The Norton Anthology of American Literature
Soomro, S., Kazemian, B., & Mahar, I. (2015). The importance of culture in second and foreign language learning. Dinamika Ilmu: Journal of Education, 15(1), 1-10
The term "Lost Generation" was popularized by
Ernest Hemingway
and attributed to
Gertrude Stein
. According to Hemingway's memoir
"
A Moveable Feast
," Stein heard a French garage owner refer to young people as the lost generation, using this term to describe the disillusioned young Americans who had experienced WWI and felt disconnected from the values of the post-war world. Stein later applied it to Hemingway and his peers, and Hemingway cemented the term's legacy by using it as an epigraph in
The Sun also Rises
According to
Britannica
, this term refers to a cohort of American writers who came of age during WW1 and established their literary reputations in the 1920s.
MAIN CHARACTERISTICS DEFINING THE LOST GEN
: According to
:
Writers belonging to this generation
captured in their works the failure of the American Dream
and the materialism of American society.
The Lost Generation perceived the United States as materialistic and emotionally barren
They
went to live for long periods in EU
due to the lack of
cosmopolitan
culture in the USA
making
Paris the centre
of their literary activities, but never a formal literary school.
They were apart from American society in their style of writing and subject they chose to write about, exploring
themes
of existential angst
and the search for meaning
in a changed world.
They were key to shift American
style
of writing,
incorporating
stream of consciousness, fragmented narratives and a realistic approach to character development.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmR8H_vgtgk&t=111s
John
Steinbeck
Jr. was born in 1902 in Salinas, California, place that he appreciated for its land and which would greatly shape his later writing.
LIFE
He intermittently attended Standford University intermittently but didn't complete a degree. Instead, he tried to make a go of it as a freelance writer.
🗽He moved to NYC where he worked as a newspaper reporter, but then returned to California where he took a job as a caretaker in Lake Tahoe and began his writing career.
https://youtu.be/qHi9v4atov4?si=T_-QORYt_-pBTIkx
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3irviknt-fg&pp=ygUNam9obiBzdGVpbmJlYw%3D%3D
His
writing style
was unique due to his
dual use of omniscient narration
combined with a real empathy for his characters. He
inherited naturalism and developed realism,
being
influenced by journalism
.🗞️
shaped by her first wife, Caroll, who was a proofreader and an editor.
experimental
, he tried to make his work organic in each book, using the fabular for "The Pearl"
, and the picaresque for "Tortilla Flat"
🗨️
Conversational language
, rethoric devices and
biblical syntax
WORKS AND THEMES
His works included film scripts, plays, political speeches, and war propaganda.
He authored 33 books: 16 novels, 6 non-fiction books and 2 collections of short stories.
He's widely known for the
comic novels "
Tortilla Flat
"
(1935) and the Novellas
"The Red Pony (1933) and "Of Mice and Men (1937)
Most of his work is set in central California.
The
Pulitzer Prize-winning "
The Grapes of Wrath
" (1939)
is considered Steinbeck's masterpiece and part of the American literary canon with the Dust Bowl as the subject matter. He also won the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lf12f09BcE&pp=ygUcam9obiBzdGVpbmJlY2sgaW4gYSBudXRzaGVsbA%3D%3D
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qZu-EWgACBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-D1uCxFTbA&pp=ygUYam9obiBzdGVpbmJlY2sgYmlvZ3JhZmlh
Ernest Hemingway
was an American author, journalist and sportsman who was awarded the
1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
His
WRITING STYLE
was shaped in reaction to his experience of WW. He developed a style in which meaning's established through dialogue, action and silence.
His fiction often used grammatical and stylistic structures from languages other than English. He often used
bilingual puns and cross-lingual wordplay
as stylistic devices.
He learned to get the most from the least when he began as a writer of short stories. He developed a style he entitled "
the Iceberg Theory
"
which suggests that the majority of a story's substance lies beneath the surface, much like the majority of an iceberg is submerged underwater.
Hemingway
avoided complicated syntax
, keeping his prose direct and unadorned
He used
autobiographical details
, drawing on his own experiences
He offers a multi-focal photographic reality or "
snapshot
"
that creates a collage of images
He was an
obssessive reviser
.
He's considered a
master of dialogue
, using it to reveal character and advance the plot
https://youtu.be/k5hBWfZeJL0?si=b8fx0MJZtX8tuCeO
His adventurous
life
style and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Many of his works are considered classics of American Literature.
He was raised in Oak Park. After High School he worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star before leaving for the Italian Front to enlist as an
ambulance driver in WW1
, inspiring him to write "A Farewell To Arms"
In 1921, he moved to Paris to work as a foreign correspondent and was influenced by writers of the Lost Gen.
He covered as a
journalist the Spanish Civil war
which was the basis for his novel
"For whom the Bell Tolls".
During WW2 Hemingway was present as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yg9jG9fLL8
His most representative
WORKS
are:
"The Sun Also Rises"
:
"
A Farewell To Arms
"
pullitzer-prize winning Novella: "
The Old Man and the Sea
":
And we find the following
THEMES
:
Obsessive fascination with life and death
an interest in
fishing
and in
war
and in
bullfighting
a strange perception of
sex
, sth he was addicted to describing
an unusual fixation on the
mediterranean
region.
He brought middle class Americanism into literature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO5D3rPGYcI&pp=ygUacm9tYW50aWNpc21vIG1pZ3VlbCBkZSBseXM%3D
William Faulkner
(1897-1962), born in Mississippi, . Nobel prize winner in 1949 who also won 2 pullitzer prizes
with "A Fable" and "The Reivers"
.
He's a key figure in the Southern Gothic Literary Tradition.
LIFE
He attended the university of Mississippi but dropped it out to start his literary career in the 20s. Seeking greater economic success, he went to
Hollywood
to work as a
screenwriter
.
He was an interpreter of history, using it to redefine human nature and our relationship to it.
His work became more and more anti-racist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuQIZ7V9C7U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUiU13ATPn4
Among the most representative Faulkner's
WORK
we find:
"As I Lay Dying
" gothic novel narrated by 15 different characters, preceded by
"
The sound and the Fury
", a dramatic presentation of a family of Yoknapatawpha County in northern Mississipi.
"
Absalom, Absalom
" details the rise and fall of a white man born into poverty in Western Virginia who moves to Mississippi with the dual aims of gaining wealth and becoming a powerful family patriarch.
He was also a prolific writer of short stories and his first collection was titled "These 13", set in his imaginary county, Yoknapatawpha.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYQWh8VGL3M
Influenced by Joyce and Woolf, Faulkner employed a non-lineal structure, with fragmented narration, stream of consciousness and deep psychological exploration of his characters interrupted by flashbacks/forwards
Faulkner was known for his
experimental style with meticulous attention to diction and cadence
. He was a writer of extremes and abstractions who strove to demolish existing paradigms which interfered with his project.
He tried to achieve sth new, coining many new words
, often by means of adding unorthodox suffixes and prefixes and utilised existing words in unconventional ways.
His texts included key information, an obscure narrative and
characters
that
do not seem to have "common sense
".
😠Most of his novels have a
serious
tone
. However, he
mixed tragedy with comedy.
😭🤣
He
tried to say more with more
while his contemporaries were attempting to do with less.
The most common
THEMES
seen in his works are:
concerned with the human heart in conflict with itself.
The
decline of the south
due to its fatal or original sin of slavery.
past-present connection, social/moral burdens.
Exploration of
stereotypes of African Americans and women
(issues of sex class and race: relationship blacks-whites)
Faulkner loved and depicted nature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCp2HLMcofg&pp=ygUHbyBjYXNleQ%3D%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErFJqn9efis&pp=ygUgbGEgZ2VuZXJhY2lvbiBwZXJkaWRhIHVucHJvZmVzb3I%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHgdb3_JHrs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmexzAv7sQ&t=527s&pp=ygUgbGEgZ2VuZXJhY2lvbiBwZXJkaWRhIHVucHJvZmVzb3I%3D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8GRHFAJ5oE&t=43s
