User:Miss Hiyori/OLES2129/Writers in Paris in the 1920s

Writers in Paris in the 1920s

Ⅰ. Background

• Where the writers were living & When their literary works were written

The City: Paris

Paris, the capital of France and the most prominent city in Europe, is known as the center of culture and the home for many famous novelists, poets, and dramatists from both domestic and expatriate. For centuries, French literature has represented the highest level around the world.

The Time: the 1920s

The 1920s, ten years shortly after the First World War, is also called the “Roaring Twenties” in Western society and “crazy years” in France. During that time, the social dynamic, economic development, and technological innovation, finally resulted in cultural prosperity.

Pairs in the 1920s

Literature is spread across the continents and through the ages, which bounds the writers and their works with a place and a time. Paris in the 1920s is unique for tis special literature atmosphere and such atmosphere had a strong appeal to writers all over the world.

Under such circumstances, the cultural center and the golden age together created a free and superior environment that attracted several notable authors to settle down in Paris and write out outstanding pieces of literature, which influences the following generations.

Ⅱ. Domestic Writers

• The most famous French writers, Their literature works & Their lives in Paris

Anatole France

Anatole France (1844-1924)

Anatole France, the writer, literary critic, and social activist, was born in Paris.

His most recognized and famous literary works include The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard (1881), At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque (1893), Penguin Island (1908), The Gods are Athirst (1912), and Revolt of the Angels (1914).

After WWⅠ, the socialism movement became popular in France, which greatly influenced Anatole France. He was disappointed by the dark side of the government and decided to fight for what he believed in.

In 1921, Anatole France joined the French Communist Party and received the Nobel Prize in the same year for his “grace and temperament”. His political life in Paris during 1920s had a huge influence on his literary works. Actually, his poetries and plays, as well as his memoir The Bloom of Life, all express his sympathy towards left-wing intellectuals in Paris in the 1920s.

Andre Gide

Andre Gide (1869-1951)

Andre Gide, the writer of novels, poetries, and plays, was born in Paris.

His most recognized and famous literary works include The Fruits of the Earth (1897), The Immoralist (1902), Strait is the Gate (1909), Isabelle (1911), and Travels in the Congo (1927).

In the 1920s, the rise of aestheticism, symbolism, and naturalism was the most significant feature in literary. Andre Gide accepted the above thoughts and practiced them in his works. At that time, he focused on the beauty of art and the freedom of natural person instead of the morality of society.

Such ideas can be found in Andre Gide’s famous novels, such as The Counterfeiters, which revealed the liberation revolution in Paris in the 1920s.

Colette

Colette (1873-1954)

Colette, the national treasure essayist, was born in France.

Her most recognized and famous literary works include Claudine at School (1900), Claudine in Paris (1901), The Vagabond (1910), Green Wheat (1923), and The Pure and Impure (1932).

In Colette’s early years, she was brought to Paris by her husband, a famous publisher. She was then introduced to the upper class and pushed to write a series of novels. After she living in Paris for twenty years, her literary works not only reflected the lifestyle of the Paris literature circle but also depicted the picture of idyllic pastoral.

Colette’s most famous novel Cheri, which was published in 1920, faithfully implied her own marriages and feminism movement in Paris in the 1920s.

Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Jean Cocteau, the poet and gifted scholar, was born in France.

His most recognized and famous literary works include The White Paper (1928), The Blood of a Poet (1930), The Difficulty of Being (1947), The Eagle with Two Heads (1948), and Diary of an Unknown (1953).

During the 1920s, moires art, a kind of scenario art, was widely spread in Paris. Movies and theatres attracted Jean Cocteau and he became active in the field of realism and avant-garde. In some of his works, people could find out some figures that are homosexuals, which acted as pioneers of freedom and liberation at that time.

From 1924 to 1929, Jean Cocteau wrote Orpheus and The Terrible Children, both of which showed the popularity of mythologies, melodramas, and fantastics in Paris in the 1920s.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) & Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)

Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir

Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir, the most famous couple in literature and philosophy, were born in Paris.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s most recognized and famous literary works include Nausea (1938), The Wall (1939), The Age of Reason (1945), Existentialism is a Humanism (1946), and The Words (1963).

Simone de Beauvoir’s most recognized and famous literary works include She Came to Stay (1943), The Blood of Others (1945), All Men are Mortal (1946), The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), and America Day by Day (1948).

Sartre and Beauvoir were met in 1929. Since they both suffered from WWⅠ, studied philosophy in Paris, and believed in existentialism, they fell in love with each other and then became the most wide-known couple in the world. In the 1920s, Sartre followed the philosophical theories of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche while Beauvoir claimed that her life would never surrender to other people’s will.

Sartre’s notable work Being and Nothingness and Beauvoir’s famous The Second Sex were inspired by their educational experiences in Paris in the 1920s.

Ⅲ. Expatriate Writers

• The most famous foreign writers, Their literature works & Their lives in Paris

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein, an American collector and poet, moved to Paris in 1903.

Her most recognized and famous literary works include Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1914), The Making of Americans (1925), The World is Round (1939), and Paris France (1940).

In the 1920s, Gertrude Stein established the Stein Salon, which provided a place for expatriate writers gathering around and discussing literature in Paris. The Salon welcomed both artists, such as Pablo Picasso, and writers, such as Ernest Hemingway.

These giants, along with Gertrude Stein herself, proved that the post-war prosperity of literature symbolises not only the end of the world war but also the beginning of the modern society in Paris in the 1920s.

James Joyce

James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce, an Irish novelist and poet, moved to Paris in 1920.

His most recognized and famous literary works include Dubliners (1914), The Dead (1914), The Boarding House (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and Finnegans Wake (1936).

As the founder of postmodernism, James Joyce wrote about how society influenced human beings. When he moved around Paris and Europe, he witnessed and experienced that the social environment could ruin people’s ideals and hopes.

James Joyce finished his work Ulysses in 1922, which later was seen as the milestone in the stream of consciousness. The novel reflects the loneliness and pessimism of people under modern society in Paris in the 1920s.

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Ezra Pound, an American poet and literary critic, moved to Paris in 1921.

His most recognized and famous literary works include Cathay (1915), Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), The Cantos (1925), Make It New (1934), and Pisan Cantos (1948).

Being an imagism poet, Ezra Pound focused on distinctive characters and spiritual connections. This writing feature is the result of his viewpoint towards WWⅠ, which he called the product of “Pejorocray”, the falling down of capitalism.

Besides writing his own literary works, Ezra Pound also funded expatriate writers who had trouble in publishing their works. For example, he helped James Joyce publish Ulysses in 1922, which indicates that writers moved from other countries were united in Paris in the 1920s.

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Ernest Hemingway, an American writer and journalist, move to Paris in 1921.

His most recognized and famous literary works include The Torrents of Spring (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and Old Man and the Sea (1952).

At that time, Ernest Hemingway represented “the Lost Generation” writers. Those writers suffered from WWⅠ and faced the social transformation after the war. However, they still fought for their lives with pens in a natural and direct style of writing.

Many of Ernest Hemingway’ novels were published in Paris, including The Sun Also Rises in 1926. His novels influenced other writers in the following generations, leading them to explore social problems in Paris in the 1920s.

George Orwell

George Orwell (1903-1950)

George Orwell, a British novelist and social critic, move to Paris in 1928.

His most recognized and famous literary works include Burmese Days (1934), A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Coming Up for Air (1939), and Animal Farm (1945).

In order to gather writing materials, George Orwell settled down in Paris and observed the life of the lower class. Later, he wrote his debut Down and Out in Paris and London, which revealed ordinary people’s living conditions in these two cities.

George Orwell implied his own political conviction with his true experiences in his novels, indicating that some people were still struggling under the seeming prosperity in Paris in the 1920s.

Ⅳ. Genre

• The literary genre that the writers and their literature works belonged to

Modernism

Modernism is one of the most important trend and movement in the late 19th century and the early 20th century. During this period of time, writers in Pairs started to care more about nature and human beings and their literary works reflected the relationship between different groups of people as well as different social patterns.

Postmodernism

The concept of “bond societies”, leads to the postmodernism genre in the twentieth century. Both of the incredible literature thoughts are rooted in the heightened awareness of trust and innovation.

These thoughts can be found in the literary works written by representative writers, such as Anatole France, Andre Gide, Colette, Jean Cocteau, and Jean-Paul Sartre & Simone de Beauvoir.

Ⅴ. Influences

• The deep influence of the writers and their literary works around the world

During the 1920s

Writers in Paris reacted towards wars happened in the twentieth century, which includes the First World War from 1914 to 1918. The lives and works of those literary giants in France, together created the post-war prosperity of literature in Paris, which indicates the final ending of the war and marks the new begins of an era.

After the 1920s

Writers in Paris and their literature works in the 1920s were generating and answering the question of “who or what I am”. Modernism and postmodernism writers, both domestic and expatriate at that time started to explore such a question, which then influences how people deal with the paradox of the undermined identity in the following centuries.

These influences can be found in the literary works written by representative writers, such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, and George Orwell.