After World War I and during the 1920s, many American writers felt disillusioned by the social and cultural restrictions in the United States. They found community and a new perspective in Paris among other expatriate writers. Ernest Hemingway was among those who moved to Paris during this time, finding inspiration and mentors in the already established writing community. He later wrote about his experiences in Paris and with other American writers through fictionalized accounts and his memoir A Moveable Feast.

1. Searching for a New Perspective –
Hemingway and American Writers In Paris
Expatriatism (personal reasons - - slide 1):
• A sense of no longer feeling at home within cultural norms
• A need to express you own sense of cultural normality
• An identified sense of community in another place
• Examples of how this occurred with writers on the 20s
The Great War (World War I – slide 2):
• A war of unique scope and horror – millions killed and injured
At home (U.S.A. - - Slide 3)
• Racism – slavery, emergence of ethnic and racial minorities
• Censorship – overall a cultural rigidity that (legally, cultural practice) forbids
public expression (writing, speech, practice) of divergence from norms
The result of these restrictions? (slide 4)
• Anomie: lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group
– a drift away from cultural norms.
• Some sense of the Enlightenment project going wrong
• Reason was failing western civilization
• The arts: (often the cultural project in which new ideas find expression)
o See slide points
Two choices – despair or idealism if idealism, a need to find a more comfortable
environment that might yield a new perspective (slide 5)
• Expatriatism isn’t new
• Usually involves cities
• Refer to slide
What’s needed - - particularly for writers - - (slide 6)
• See slide points
American Writers in Paris: (Slide 7)
• Some had been there for a while (Pound, Stein – mentors)
• Refer to slide

2. • Others (not writers) influenced the literary movement of 20s Paris (Slide 8)
Case studies:
• Ernest Hemingway: Slide 9 "You are all a "génération perdue." "That is what
you are. That's what you all are...all of you young people who served in the
war. You are a lost generation."
• John Dos Passos: Slide 10
• Hilda Doolittle: Slide 11
• Djuna Barnes: Slide 12
• Scott Fitzgerald: Slide 13
A Moveable Feast - - Slide 14
• The Sun Also Rises – roman a clef – the beginnings of the community’s
ultimate failure.
o Hemingway as Jake Barnes
o Lady Brett Ashley affairs with Robert Cohn and a matador, Romero
• A Moveable Feast – written in the 1950s as a memoir about these writers, the
writing scene in 20s Paris
• Dos Passos – Pilot Fish
• Passage from the book
Hemingway wives:
Hadley Richardson
Pauline Pfeiffer
Martha Gellhorn
Mary Welsh