12. Literature of the “lost generation” r.Aldington, e.Hemingway, f.S.Fitzgerald

On the one hand people were recovering from the tragedy of the World War 1. Those who had taken part in the war tried to adjust themselves to the postwar way of life but they often failed, as the dramatic war experience had ruined the set of old ideas. This people are “lost generation”. Writers dealt with serious social, ethic and moral issues. They as well as their personages had all passed through the horrors of the war which they had entered with naïve and optimistic illusions. So at last war became a kind of novel enterprise. Having faced the reality of the war, many of characters in the books lost their lives or returned injured either physically or morally or both. They found themselves impossible to adjust to the post-war life. Among the representatives of the lost generation are Richard Aldington – English lost generation, Ernest Hemingway – The American lost generation Francis Scott Fitzgerald- American

Richard Aldington (1892-1962): was the editor of the magazine “The Egoist” and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Started his career under the influence of imagism. During the World War I he was badly injured and then made his living as a critic and a translator. He published 4 volumes of poetry and soon began writing prose. ‘Death of a Hero’: complicated work of three parts, different by genre:.Bildungsroman; A Kunstroman(Love story) a war novel. The roman has a frame structure. It starts and ends with the same scene- death. The title of the novel is ironical as there is nothing heroic in his death. His other novels are:“Colonel’s Daughter”, “All Men Are Enemies”, “Very Heaven”

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction. Hemingway's style was fundamentally shaped "in reaction to experience of world war. Won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954; raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school he reported for a few months for The Kansas City Star; the Italian front in the World War I as ambulance drivers. In 1918, he was seriously wounded and returned home.. Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

F. S. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, his most famous, The Great Gatsby and what is now considered his true masterpiece, Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with despair and age.

13. Two generations of American Romanticists. J.F.Cooper, e.A.Poe, w.Irving

In America Romanticism(1820-1860) emerged 30 years later than it did in England or France due to the peculiarities of American history. American Romanticism had much in common with European. The development of the self became the mayor theme(self-awareness), self and nature were one

Ch-s: values, feelings and intuition over reason, places faith in inner experience and the power of the imagination, nature, prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication, individual freedom, looks backwards to the wisdom of the past, finds inspiration in myths, legends and folk culture

Washington Irving introduced the genre of a short story. Most of his stories have humorous character.( "Rip Van Winkle", "The Devil and Tom Walker", )Actually Irving was the father of the American Romanticism & the first American writer who was recognized by Europe as the first representative of America's national literature.

James Fenimore Cooper. He consciously became a novel writer as he did not want to compete with Irving (in writing short stories) while novel writing remained an open field at that time. And his first novels brought him immediate success & when he decided to visit Europe he was seen off as an ambassador of American literature. Yet when he came back to America 6 years later, he realizes that the reality was different from the ideal which he had drawn for himself. He began to expose American vices in his numerous pamphlets which brought public censure on him. ("The Spy", Leather-Stocking Tale s")

Edgar Allan Рое put feeling & intuition above reason & rationalism. Yet on the other hand he sings prays to man's intellectual powers. Не is the pioneer of the intellectual detective story. He worked out his own aesthetics of story writing: stories should have a dynamic & entertaining plot that would keep the reader in suspense to the very end. Yet they should be short enough to be read at one sitting. ("Annabel Lee", "T h e В e 11 s", "The Raven")