20th Century American Literature20世纪美国文学.ppt

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. 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. 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. Jazz Age 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 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. 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 from serious problems. Lost Generation refers to those writers who were devoid of faith, values and ideals 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 v