Lost Generation

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The Lost Generation also refers to the ex-Red Guards in China. See Red Guards (China). For the David Tremayne book, see The Lost Generation (book).

Lost Generation 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. It 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.

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 du 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 [citation needed].

This generation is currently the oldest extant generation in the world.

Contents

[edit] 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.


[edit] Celebrities

Western Generations
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Term Period
Awakening Generation 1701–1723
First Great Awakening 1727–1746
Liberty Generation
Republican Generation
Compromise Generation		 1724–1741
1742–1766
1767–1791
Second Great Awakening 1790–1844
Transcendentalist Generation
Transcendental Generation
Abolitionist Generation
Gilded Generation
Progressive Generation		 1789–1819
1792–1821
1819–1842
1822–1842
1843–1859
Third Great Awakening 1886–1908
Missionary Generation
Lost Generation
Interbellum Generation
G.I. Generation
Greatest Generation		 1860–1882
1883–1900
1900–1910
1900–1924
1911–1924
Jazz Age 1929–1956
Silent Generation
Baby Boomers
Beat Generation
Generation Jones		 1925–1945
1946–1964
1948–1962
1954–1962
Consciousness Revolution 1964–1984
Baby Busters
Generation X
MTV Generation
 1958–1968
1963–1978
1975–1985
Culture Wars 1980s–present
Boomerang Generation
Generation Y
Internet Generation
New Silent Generation		 1977–1986
1979–1999
1988–1999
2000–2020

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.

[edit] Foreign Peers

[edit] Surviving members of note

[edit] 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).

[edit] Popular culture

  • The 1988 film The Moderns locates itself in 1926 Paris during the period of the Lost Generation.

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Missionary Generation
1860 – 1882		 Lost Generation
1883 – 1900		 Succeeded by
G.I. Generation
1901 – 1924
Sub-Generations:
Preceded by
Abolitionist Generation
c. 1819 – c. 1842		 Lost Generation
1883 – 1900		 Succeeded by
Interbellum Generation
c. 1900 – c. 1910
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