A study of F.S. Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise in the context of the Lost Generation and the Jazz Age

Abstract

My final degree project will study Scott Fitzgerald novel This Side of Paradise, which was published in 1920. This book is especially important in the author’s career because it made him popular in the American literary scene. This project will analyse this novel’s crucial impact on the American society and literature at that time and subsequent periods. In the project, I will analyse the figure of F.S. Fitzgerald as a writer in the history of American literature and the importance of the mood of disillusion that took hold of America after the Great War and that profoundly shaped the outlook of the members of the so-called Lost Generation of writers, which included Fitzgerald. Attention will also be paid to how Fitzgerald portrayed one of the most important eras in American history, the Roaring Twenties, which also called “The Jazz Age”. I will analyse the figure of the main character, a young man named Amory Blaine and the way Fitzgerald reflects through his life the main events and preoccupations of this era. Another important point in this project will be how this book portrayed the figure of the new woman, who was demanding social, sexual, and intellectual freedom