Lost Literature

Lost Literature

Roaring Twenties, Jazz Age, and the Golden Age of Twenties- all these phrases are used to describe the economic and cultural prosperity of the 1920s. After the devastation of World War I, the world made an economic comeback characterized by the rise of consumerism and increasing division of wealth. Along with this came the rising popularity of reading as recreation, which promoted the importance of newspapers, magazines, and books. Authors began to win Nobel Prizes, and novels began to define the ideals and critics of this time period. Some examples include The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, which spoke of the loss of morality in American society, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, which discussed the shortcomings of the American Dream, Their Eyes Were Watching God by a renowned African American anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston.

These books were accompanied by defining literary movements. For instance, Literary Modernism (1900-1945) focused on using experimental styles and challenging previous standards for writing. World War I caused the movement to become much darker and directed writing towards topics such as alienation, social commentary, and despair. Authors who participated include F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and Ernest Hemingway. Literary movements also accompanied magazines, such as “Weird Tales”, a series of pulp fiction magazines. “Weird Tales” sought to produce high quality bizarre short stories and challenged the intellect. Yet another type of pulp fiction, known as Hard-Boiled Fiction often depicted antiheroes and focused on crime solving private detectives. Popular authors were Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett. Additionally, literary change often reflected social change as well. As women began to take more control over their lives with the passage of the 19th Amendment and started to work more, magazines such as the “Ladies Home Journal” began publishing feminist short stories and publications such as “The Age of Innocence” by Edith Wharton (1920). Wharton would later go on to be awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize. At the same time, segregation and growing socialism sparked the promotion of equality and the problems with class. The Harlem Renaissance, for example, was a burst of cultural productivity among African Americans that included authors such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and W. E. B. Dubois; all who worked to change stereotypes and assert themselves as artists.

Often, writers in the 1920s were inspired by the aftermath of World War I. These groups became known as the “Lost Generation”, coined by Ernest Hemingway. This term was used to refer to those who became disillusioned after the destruction of war and had lost faith in traditional values. More specifically, the “Lost Generation” was a group of writers who often wrote about decadence, hedonism, gender roles, and idealised pasts. Consider the extravagant parties of James Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s novel, or the aimless traveling and partying in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises- both these books focused on the shallowness of the upper class.

However, the economic boom of the 1920s would soon come to an end with the beginning of The Great Depression in 1929. The Modernists began to wane and new waves of writers looked to politics and economics as new inspiration. At a time when the world became torn with poverty, political strife with communism and fascism, literature would once again be changed, and the world along with it.

Sources

• http://www.1920-30.com/literature/
• https://penandthepad.com/american-writing-styles-1920s-8618321.html
• https://writersinspire.org/content/lost-generation
• http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/ZZncvg9y41SEFfR4N28nqO/How-Great-Depression-spawned-literary-masterworks.html