Chapter VIII American Modern Lierature

Chapter VIII American Modern Lierature

I. The Effect of the First World War

The First World War was followed, in America, by two decades which were distinctly different from one another. The first, the Twenties, lasted from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 until the Crash at the end of 1929. These ten years were a time of carefree prosperity, isolation from the worlds problems, bewildering social change and a feverish pursuit of pleasures.

The second decade, the Thirties, lasted from the Crash, through the ensuing Great Depression, until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. This was a period of poverty, bleakness, important social movements and a new social consciousness. The twenty years between the two world wars were a time of great literary creativity. Six American writers who did their best and most original work during these years won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

When the First World War broke out, many idealistic young Americans volunteered to take part in the war and test their own bravery. They discovered that modern warfare was not glorious or heroic. They saw the best youth of England and France being slaughtered and at the end, they saw their ideals for a better world being bargained away for power and profit by the worlds leaders in the Treaty of Versailles.

Disillusioned by slogans of patriotism and glory, disgusted by the new frivolous, greedy of life in America, and alarmed by the low level of culture, many of these young Americas began to write. Some writers left America and formed a community of writers and artists in Paris. They stood aside, as onlookers, and wrote about they saw. They wrote from their own experiences in the war, and their own observations. They tried to make Americans see themselves with fresh, new eyes.

II. The Lost Generation

An American woman writer named Gertrude Stein(1874-1946), who had lived in Paris since 1903, welcomed the young American writers to her apartment which was already famous as a literary salon. Gertrude Stein was the advisor, friend of some of the American artists and writers of the time. Ezra Pound joined her group for a few years in the early 1920s. Together, they encouraged and helped such young writers as the novelist Ernest Hemingway and E.E.Cummings, and F.Scott Fitzgerald. Many other writers were drawn to Gertrude Steins home. She called them The Lost Generation, a name which stuck to them, because they had cut themselves off from their past in America in order to create new types of writing which had never been tried before.Full of youthful idealism, these individuals sought the meaning of life, drank excessively, had love affairs and created some of the finest American literature to date.

The Lost Generation writers all gained prominence in 20th century literature. Their innovations challenged assumptions about writing and expression, and paved the way for subsequent generations of writers