'''Lost Generation''' refers to a group of
American literary notables who lived in
Paris and other parts of
Europe from the time period which saw the end of
World War I to the beginning of the
Great Depression. Significant members included
Ernest Hemingway,
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ezra Pound,
Sherwood Anderson,
Waldo Peirce,
John Dos Passos, and
T. S. Eliot. The coining of the phrase is traditionally attributed to
Gertrude Stein[1] and was then popularized by
Ernest Hemingway in the epigraph to his novel ''
The Sun Also Rises'' and his memoir ''
A Moveable Feast''.
More generally, the term is used for the
generation of young people coming of age in the
United States during and shortly after
World War I. For this reason, the generation is sometimes known as the World War I Generation. In
Europe, they are most often known as the Generation of
1914, named after the year World War I began.
In
France, the country in which many
expatriates settled, they are sometimes called the ''Génération du Feu'', the Generation of Fire. Broadly, the term is often used to refer to the younger
literary modernists.
A recent common language usage for Lost Generation is for people born within the "cusp" between generations, as divisions between the generations are ambiguous.
Traits
The "Lost Generation" was said to be disillusioned by the large number of casualties of the First World War, cynical, disdainful of the notions of morality and propriety of their elders and ambivalent about 19th-century gender ideals. Like most attempts to stereotype entire generations, this over-generalization is true for some individuals of the generation and not true of others.
It was somewhat common among people of this group to complain that American artistic culture lacked the sophistication of
European work—leading many members to spend large amounts of time in Europe—and/or that all topics worth treating in a literary work had already been covered. Nevertheless, this selfsame period saw a great increase of American literature and in art, which is now often considered to include some of the greatest literary classics produced by American writers. This "generation" was also involved with the beginning of
jazz music.
Legacy
At the turn of the 21st century, a fresh cadre of expatriate writers led by such emerging authors as
D.A. Blyler (''Steffi's Club'') and
Arthur Phillips (''Prague'') asserted a new "Lost Generation" among readers, paying homage to their literary peers of 1920s Paris (see External links).
Popular culture
★ The 1988 film ''
The Moderns'' locates itself in 1926
Paris during the period of the ''Lost Generation''.
★ the novel
It Can't Happen Here by
Sinclair Lewis is about the Lost Generation and discusses in length the meaning of the term.
Notes
1. As described by Hemingway in the chapter "'Une Generation Perdue'", of ''A Moveable Feast'', the term was coined by the owner of the Paris garage where Gertrude Stein took her Model T Ford, and was picked up and translated by her.
See also
★
Social issues of the 1920s
External links
★
''Prague'' by Arthur Phillips.
★
''Steffi's Club'' by D.A. Blyler.
★
A look at the Lost Generation
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