Civil war (1642-1648) and the English Bourgeois Revolution

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.