Jazz Age
Definition:
The period of the 1920s in the United States, when ‘hot jazz’ became popular as part of the general consensus of spontaneity and social freedom. The phrase was created by the novelist F Scott Fitzgerald in 1922. It was supposed to describe the crazy "anything goes" days that appeared after World War I.
The popular image of the 1920s, as a decade of prosperity and wild living, bootleggers, gangsters, flappers, hot jazz, flagpole sitters, and marathon dancers, is etched into American culture, but this is also misleading. The 1920s was a decade of cultural conflict. These conflicts placed urban culture against traditional rural culture. The decade witnessed a struggle between an old and a new America. Immigration, race, alcohol, evolution, gender politics, and sexual morality all became cultural battlefields during the 1920s. Wets battled drys, religious modernists battled religious fundamentalists, and urban ethnics battled the Ku Klux Klan. The 1920s was a decade of social change. The most obvious signs of change were the rise of a consumer-oriented economy and of mass entertainment, which helped to bring about a "revolution in morals and manners." Sexual mores, gender roles, hair styles, and dress all changed profoundly during the 1920s. Many Americans regarded these changes as liberation from the country's Victorian past. But for others, morals seemed to be fading away, and the United States seemed to be changing in undesirable ways. The result was a "cultural civil war."
Important Movements of the Jazz Age
In the United States after WWI, which was considered the war to end all wars, a group of men and women met daily for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 20’s and 30’s. These were many of the top writers, journalists, and artists living in the city. They became known as “The Algonquin Round Table,” or simply, “The Round Table.” Some of them were Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Franklin P. Adams, Marc Connelly, Harold Ross, Harpo Marx, and Russell Crouse. The first important movement of black artists and writers also happened during this time in Harlem, New York and other urban areas. It was during this period that black writers were being published more than ever, as well as given serious appraisal. This group included artists, authors and musicians, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and Alain Locke. Their movement was called, the “Harlem Movement.” In France, self-exiled expatriates that lived and wrote in Paris between the wars were called, the “Lost Generation,” a term coined by Gertrude Stein. These writers were looking for freedom within their writing, and by doing so changed the direction of modern writing. They were rebels that wanted to fight censorship, profanity, and sexuality. They referred to Freudian ideas for their characters and styles. This movement was formed by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, John Dos Passos, Henry Miller, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There were other writers that were important during the Jazz Age as well. E.E. Cummings did a lot of experiments with punctuation and language. William Faulkner led the movement for the “Southern Renaissance.” This was also the beginning of the “Golden Age of Mysteries” with writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashielle Hammett. The Jazz Age ended with the beginning of The Great Depression. The Depression brought back conservatism to the forefront of society.
Works Consulted
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=437
http://reading.cornell.edu/reading_project_06/gatsby/jazz_age.htm
http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/default.html
http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/decade20.html
http://www.geocities.com/flapper_culture/