Part V. Twentieth-Century Literature
1920s, Jazz Age.
I. Historical Background: WWI, peace-making period/boom time.
Politically, US entered WWI in 1917 for purity and democracy. The period of peace-making ended with general disillusionment about the value of war: only a sense of the failure of political leaders and a belief in the futility of hope. No abiding solutions to the world’s problems was found. And the resurgence of nationalism and the rise of new totalitarianism produce a second world war.
from serious problems.;
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Lost Generation
refers to those writers who were devoid of faith, values and ideas and who were alienated from the civilization the capitalist society advocated. It includes the writers such as (Hemingway, F.S. Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and Louis Bromfield) and poets (like Malcolm Cowley, E. E. Cummings, Archibald Macleish, and Ezra Pound), who rebelled against former values and ideas, but replaced them only by despair or a cynical hedonism. They were totally frustrated by the WWI and returned from that “Great War” to their own country only to find the grim reality that the social values and civilization were hollow and affected if compared to the cruel realities of the battleground. They felt alienated from Am; erican civilization, which4
People experiment with new amusements.
They restlessly pursued stimulus and pleasures,
wallow in heavy drinking, fast driving and
casual sex. By these, they hoped to seek relief
Socially, decline of idealism. Patriotism became cynical disillusionment. Unity of family weakened. There appeared the revolt of the Younger Generation. They escaped responsibility and assumed immorality.
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2Jazz Age源自After WWI, people found that the war which
cost millions of lives failed to provide an abiding
solutions to the world’s problems, that the war
Lost Generation
They had cut themselves off from their past and old values in America and yet unable to come to terms with the new era when civilization had gone mad. They wandered pointlessly and restlessly, enjoying things like fishing, swimming, bullfight and beauties of nature, but they were aware all the while that the world is crazy and meaningless and futile. Their whole life was undercut and defeated. They cast away all past concepts and values in order to create new types of writing, which was characterized by disillusionment with ideals and further with civilization the capitalist society advocated. They painted the post-war western world as a waste land, lifeless and hopeless due to ethical degradation and dis; illusionment with dreams5.
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20s, Jazz Age
Economically, because of the war, American industry developed fast. The nation is full of bouncing ebullience, fearful of nothing, confident smug isolationism.
was just the traps of political leaders. Such a
disillusionment about the value of war,
accompanied by the booming of American
economy drove people to cynical hedonism.