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The term Lost Generation was coined by Gertrude Stein to refer 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, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein herself. Hemingway likely popularized the term, quoting Stein ("You are all a lost generation") as epigraph to his novel, The Sun Also Rises. Stein herself attributed the expression to a French mechanic lamenting what the war had done to the country's youth. Although James Joyce was Irish (rather than American), he was a part of this community and his work Ulysses (supported by Sylvia Beach) was considered to be one of the most important to come out of this generation *.

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 called the Génération au Feu, the Generation of Fire. Broadly, the term is often used to refer to the younger literary modernists.

William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations list this generation's birth years as 1883 to 1900. Their typical grandparents were the Gilded Generation; their parents were the Progressive Generation and Missionary Generation. Their children were the G.I. Generation and Silent Generation; their typical grandchildren were Baby boomers .

This generation is currently the oldest extant generation in the world. The current oldest person in the world as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records is Maria Esther de Capovilla of Ecuador, born September 14, 1889, aged 116 (as of June 2006) *.

Traits

The "Lost Generation" were said to be disillusioned by the large number of casualties of the First World War, cynical, disdainful of the Victorian notions of morality and propriety of their elders and ambivalent about Victorian gender ideals. Like most attempts to pigeon-hole entire generations, this over-generalization is true for some individuals of the generation and not true of others. It was somewhat common among members of this group to complain that American artistic culture lacked the breadth 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 an explosion in American literature and in art, which is now often considered to include some of the greatest literary classics produced by American writers. This generation also produced the first flowering of jazz music, arguably the first distinctly American artform.

Celebrities

Sample members of the Lost Generation include the following:

Cultural endowments of the Lost Generation include the following:

The Lost Generation produced two Presidents:

They held a plurality in the House of Representatives from 1937 to 1953, a plurality in the Senate from 1943 to 1959, and a majority of the Supreme Court from 1941 to 1967.

Foreign Peers

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.

See also

External links

| Sub-Generations:

Literary movements | American generations | Aftermath of World War I | 1880s births | 1890s births | Year of death missing | 1920s

Ztracená generace | Lost Generation | Generación Perdida | Génération perdue | הדור האבוד | დაკარგული თაობა | Elveszett nemzedék | 失われた世代 | Den tapte generasjon

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Lost Generation".

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