THE JAZZ AGE(1918 – 1928)

The Jazz Age describes the period from 1918-1929 - the years after the end of World War I, continuing through the Roaring Twenties and ending with the rise of the Great Depression.

The word “ jazz” itself is thought to derive from the word “jasm” (variants of slang - jism or gism), which the Historical Dictionary of American Slang dates to 1842 and defines as "spirit; energy; spunk." Jism also means semen.

“Masculine women, feminine men! Which is the rooster, which is the hen? It's hard to tell them apart today!And, say! Sister is busy learning to shave, Brother just loves his permanent wave, It's hard to tell them apart today!Hey, hey! “

The Cotton Club was a famous night club in New York

City that operated during the Prohibition.

While the club featured many of the greatest African American entertainers of the era, it generally denied admission to blacks. During its heyday, it served as a chic meeting spot in the heart of Harlem, featuring regular "Celebrity Nights" on Sundays, at which celebrities and other luminaries would appear.

Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971)

Armstrong's hero was Bunk Jones who played the cornet. Jones taught Armstrong to play the cornet by ear, without reading music.

He was also greatly skilled at scat singing, or wordless vocalizing. His song “Heebie Jeebies" is often cited as the first song to employ scatting.

“All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a

horse sing a song.”

Duke Ellington(1899 – 1974)

“If it sounds good, it IS good.”

“Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young.”

Bessie Smith(1892 – 1937)

The most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s, Smith is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era, and along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists.

George Gershwin (1898 – 1937)

“Jazz I regard as an American folk music; not the only one, but a very powerful one which is probably in the blood and feeling of the American people more than any other style of folk music. “

LITERATURE OF THE 20s

Lost Generation

• Lost generation is a term used to describe a group of American writers who were rebelling against what the USA had become after the 1900s.

• The phrase was first coined by Gertrude Stein and made popular by Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises”.

Characteristics of "Lost Generation" Authors

~youthful idealism

~sought the meaning of life

~drank a lot

~often love affairs

~many of the finest literary masterpieces were written during this period

~rejected modern American materialism

~lived in Paris

~gained prominence in twentieth century literature and created a mold for many future writers

Style• The style was often rude and cynic, with many

authors having bitter censorship problems.• There were many new psychology influences

and another ones from Marxian social theories.

The Brightest

• Francis Scott Fitzgerald• Ernest Hemingway• John Dos Passos• Ezra Pound• Sherwood Anderson • Waldo Pierce• Gertrude Stein• T.S. Eliot

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald(1886 – 1940)

• American writer of novels and short stories

• His work are evocative of the Jazz age, a term coined by himself

• He had written four novels, including “The Great Gatsby”, often called his masterpiece.

The Great Gatsby

• The novel chronicles the Jazz age • Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway in his novel, idolized

the riches and glamour of the age• It was adapted into both a Broadway play and a

Hollywood film within a year of publication • Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100

Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

“ A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.”

“ First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. “

Ernest Hemingway(1899 – 1961)

• American journalist, novelist, short-story writer

• Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature (1954)

• Led in the adaptation of the technique of naturalism in literature; wrote The Sun Also Rises, a naturalistic novel that included post-war disillusionment

The Sun Also Rises

• The Sun Also Rises is the first major novel by Ernest Hemingway

• It was published in the 1926• The plot centers on a group of Americans in

Europe during the 1920s. • Time magazine included the novel in its TIME

100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.

“A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.”

“All right. The road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault. “

“The hardest thing to do is write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.”

John Roderigo Dos Passos(1886 – 1970)

• American novelist and artist.

• He questioned the meaning of modern life; his novel Manhatten Transfer portrays the hopelessness of live in American cities.

Manhattan Transfer

• Manhattan Transfer is a novel by John Dos Passos published in 1925.

• The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy and restlessness.

T.S.Eliot 1888 – 1965

• A poet, dramatist, and literary critic. • He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in

1948. • Eliot was born in the United States, moved to

the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25), and became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39.

From "The Hollow Men"

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rat's feet over broken glass In our dry cellar