American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment

American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment
Title American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment PDF eBook
Author Donald Pizer
Publisher LSU Press
Pages 172
Release 1997-09-01
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 9780807122204

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Montparnasse and its café life, the shabby working-class area of the place de la Contrescarpe and the Pantheon, the small restaurants and cafés along the Seine, and the Right Bank world of the well-to-do . . . for American writers self-exiled to Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, the French capital represented what their homeland could not: a milieu that, through the freedom of thought and action it permitted and the richness of life it offered, nurtured the full expression of the creative imagination. How these expatriates interpreted and gave modernist shape to the myth of “the Paris moment” in their writing is the altogether fresh focus of Donald Pizer’s study of seven of their major works. Pizer elucidates a striking difference between the genres of expatriate autobiography and fiction, and arranges his discussion accordingly. He first examines Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934, all of which depict the emergence and triumph of the creative imagination within the Paris context. He then turns to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, John Dos Passos’ Nineteen-Nineteen, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, which dramatize the tragic potential in seeking a richness and intensity of creative expression within the city’s setting. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a relatively late example of American expatriate writing, constitutes a synthesis of the two tendencies, Pizer shows. Through careful readings of the texts, Pizer identifies both the common threads in the expatriates’ response to the Paris moment and the distinctive expression each work gives to their shared experience. Most important, he addresses the neglected question of how the portrayal of the Paris scene helps shape a specific work’s themes and form. He traces such experimental devices as fragmented or cubistic narrative forms, the dramatic representation of consciousness, and sexual explicitness, and explores the powerful and evocative tropes of mobility and feeding. As Pizer demonstrates, Paris between the two world wars was for the American expatriates more than a geographical entity. It was a state of mind, an experience, that engendered the formal expression of a personal aesthetic. The engaging and significant interplay between artist, place, and innovative self-reflexive forms composes, Pizer maintains, the most distinctive contribution of expatriate writing to the literary movement called high modernism.

American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment

American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment
Title American Expatriate Writing and the Paris Moment PDF eBook
Author Donald Pizer
Publisher
Pages 149
Release 1996
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780807120262

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Montparnasse and its cafe life, the shabby working-class area of the place de la Contrescarpe and the Pantheon, the small restaurants and cafes along the Seine, and the Right Bank world of the well-to-do...for American writers self-exiled to Paris during the 1920s and 1930s, the French capital represented what their homeland could not a milieu that through the freedom of thought and action it permitted and the richness of life it offered, nurtured the full expression of the creative imagination. How these expatriates interpreted and gave modernist shape to the myth of "the Paris moment" in their writing is the altogether fresh focus of Donald Pizer's study of seven of their major works. Through careful readings of the texts, Pizer identifies both the common threads in the expatriates' response to the Paris moment and the distinctive expression each work gives to their shared experience. Most important, he addresses the neglected question of how the portrayal of the Paris scene helps shape a specific work's themes and form. He traces such experimental devices as fragmented or cubistic narrative forms, the dramatic representation of consciousness, and sexual explicitness, and explores the powerful and evocative tropes of mobility and feeding. As Pizer demonstrates, Paris between the two world wars was for the American expatriates more than a geographical entity. It was a state of mind, an experience that engendered the formal expression of a personal aesthetic. The engaging and significant interplay between artist, place and innovative self-reflexive forms composes, Pizer maintains the most distinctive contribution of expatriate writing to the literary movement called high modernism.

American Writers in Europe

American Writers in Europe
Title American Writers in Europe PDF eBook
Author F. Asya
Publisher Springer
Pages 250
Release 2013-10-03
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 1137340029

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These essays explore the impartial critical outlook American writers acquired through their experiences in Europe since 1850. Collectively, contributors reveal how the American writer's intuitive sense of freedom, coupled with their feeling of liberation from European influences, led to intellectual independence in the literary works they produced.

Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing

Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing
Title Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing PDF eBook
Author Ahmad Rasmi Qabaha
Publisher Springer
Pages 260
Release 2018-05-23
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 3319914154

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This book examines the distinction between literary expatriation and exile through a 'contrapuntal reading' of modern Palestinian and American writing. It argues that exile, in the Palestinian case especially, is a political catastrophe; it is banishment by a colonial power. It suggests that, unlike expatriation (a choice of a foreign land over one’s own), exile is a political rather than an artistic concept and is forced rather than voluntary — while exile can be emancipatory, it is always an unwelcome loss. In addition to its historical dimension, exile also entails a different perception of return to expatriation. This book frames expatriates as quintessentially American, particularly intellectuals and artists seeking a space of creativity and social dissidence in the experience of living away from home. At the heart of both literary discourses, however, is a preoccupation with home, belonging, identity, language, mobility and homecoming.

Expatriate American Authors in Paris

Expatriate American Authors in Paris
Title Expatriate American Authors in Paris PDF eBook
Author Michael Grawe
Publisher diplom.de
Pages 106
Release 2001-03-05
Genre Literary Collections
ISBN 3832431594

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Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: Paris has traditionally called to the American heart, beginning with the arrival of Benjamin Franklin in 1776 in an effort to win the support of France for the colonies War of Independence. Franklin would remain in Paris for nine years, returning to Philadelphia in 1785. Then, in the first great period of American literature before 1860, literary pioneers such as Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were all to spend time in the French capital. Henry James, toward the close of the nineteenth century, was the first to create the image of a talented literary artist who was ready to foreswear his citizenship. From his adopted home in England he traveled widely through Italy and France, living in Paris for two years. There he became close friends with another literary expatriate, Edith Wharton, who made Paris her permanent home. Between them they gave the term expatriate a high literary polish at the turn of the century, and their prestige was undeniable. They were the in cosmopolitans, sought out by traveling Americans, commented on in the press, the favored guests of scholars, as well as men and women of affairs. This thesis investigates the mass expatriation of Americans to Paris during the 1920s, and then focuses on selected works by two of the expatriates: Ernest Hemingway s The Sun Also Rises (1926) and F. Scott Fitzgerald s The Great Gatsby (1925). The specific emphasis is on disillusionment with the American lifestyle as reflected in these novels. The two books have been chosen because both are prominent examples of the literary criticism that Americans were directing at their homeland from abroad throughout the twenties. In a first step, necessary historical background regarding the nature of the American lifestyle is provided in chapter two. This information is included in order to facilitate a better understanding of what Hemingway and Fitzgerald were actually disillusioned with. Furthermore, that lifestyle was a primary motivating factor behind the expatriation of many United States citizens. Attention is given to the extraordinary nature of the American migration to Paris in the twenties, as the sheer volume of exiles set it apart from any expatriation movement before or since in American history. Moreover, a vast majority of the participants were writers, artists, or intellectuals, a fact which suggests the United States during [...]

The Harlem Renaissance

The Harlem Renaissance
Title The Harlem Renaissance PDF eBook
Author Lynn Domina
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Pages 212
Release 2014-11-25
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN

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A perfect guide for use in high school classes, this book explores the fascinating literature of the Harlem Renaissance, reviewing classic works in the context of the history, society, and culture of its time. The Harlem Renaissance is one of the most interesting eras in African American literature as well as a highly regarded period in our country's literary history. The works produced during this span reflect a turbulent social climate in America ... a time fraught with both opportunities and injustices for minorities. In this enlightening guide, author and educator Lynn Domina examines the literature of the Harlem Renaissance along with the cultural and societal factors influencing its writers. This compelling book illuminates the cultural conditions affecting the lives of African Americans everywhere, addressing topics such as prohibition, race riots, racism, interracial marriage, sharecropping, and lynching. Each chapter includes historical background on both the literary work and the author and explores several themes through historical document excerpts and thoughtful analysis to illustrate how literature responded to the surrounding social circumstances. Chapters conclude with a discussion of why and how the literary work remains relevant today.

Henry Miller and How He Got That Way

Henry Miller and How He Got That Way
Title Henry Miller and How He Got That Way PDF eBook
Author Katy Masuga
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Pages 209
Release 2011-02-23
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 074868767X

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Brings Henry Miller back to the critical attention that his work deserves as well as making an original contribution to literary discussion on intertextuality.