Paris in the 1920’s †“The Lost Generation” Essay

Paris in the 1920’s – â€Å"The Lost Generation† Between the end of the First World War and Hitlers seizure of power a cultural explosion occurred in Paris that altered our notions of art and reality and shaped our way of viewing the world ever since. In the 1920s, Paris became the undisputed international capital of pleasure and was regarded as the cultural and artistic center of Europe with a reputation for staging one of its most glamorous eras, as well as some of the most spectacular revues in the world. Imagine for a moment, that it really is 1920s Paris. You are leisurely strolling through the gas lit promenades. World War I is over and the exuberance of jazz musicians, symbolist painters, and American expatriates†¦show more content†¦By the end of the decade, statistics revealed that there were as many as thirty thousand artists in Paris alone. The â€Å"Lost Generation† is essentially a term that is used to describe the young adults of the 1920’s who were changing with the times and rebelling against what America had become after the war. They populated areas like Paris and London where they expected to find literary freedom and a cosmopolitan way of life. The â€Å"Lost Generation of American writers and poets left America, seeking refuge from the broken culture and devastation that had come from the war, and ended up in Paris, a city that had a thriving art culture where they could write freely and lavish in the Bohemian lifestyle without rules. They drank, traveled, had love affairs, and wrote. They were influenced by the paintings of artists like Dada and Picasso and collected their works, as well as socialized with them. They critiqued each other’s writing and often met in bookstores, cafà ©s, and bars to talk about their works and life in general. They had mostly upper-middle-class upbringi ngs and were sustained in hard times by their parents fortunes. They chose to come to Paris to seek artistic fulfillment and ended up writing what is possibly considered some of the best fiction of the 20th century. It was the time when writers, painters, musicians, and composers went to Paris to work andShow MoreRelated Parallels Between The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald 1064 Words   |  5 PagesParallels Between The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway and The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   During the decade of the 1920s, America was going through many changes, evolving from the Victorian Period to the Jazz Age. Changing with the times, the young adults of the 1920s were considered the Lost Generation. The Great War was over in 1918. Men who returned from the war had the scars of war imprinted in their minds. 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This group of people wasRead More Lost Generation in Hemingways The Sun Also Rises Essay example1515 Words   |  7 PagesLost Generation in Hemingways The Sun Also Rises      Ã‚   In the words of Herbert Hoover, Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow and the triumphs that are the aftermath. War disfigures and tears away precious lives. Its horrors embed themselves like an infectious disease in the minds of the survivors, who, when left to salvage the pieces of their former existences, are brushed into obscurity by the individuals