“THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED”—THE INFLUENCE OF ZELDA FITZGERALD ON F. SCOTT FITZGERALD’S LIFE AND LITERARY OUTPUT (original) (raw)
Related papers
Gatsby's Mentors: Queer Relations Between Love and Money in The Great Gatsby
The Journal of Men's Studies, 2011
This essay examines relationships between men and the role patriarchal capitalism plays in the construction of sexuality in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby(1925), a novel written during a critical period in the history of sexuality, as well as of gay and lesbian history. The ambivalence about male bonds—in particular the simultaneously loving and abusive dynamics of mentoring—depicted in this canonical work of American literature reveals the author's unease about his relationship with Catholic priest and teacher Sigourney Fay and provides insight into the author's well-known lifelong anxiety about his gender and sexuality.
THREE BIOGRAPHIES AND THREE PERCEPTIONS OF ONE AUTHOR
It has been noticed that the observation, understanding and analysis of the authors change the representation of the life history of the same person. F. Scott Fitzgerald is considered to be a great chronicler of the Modern Era of English Literature. There was always something fabulous about F. Scott Fitzgerald. He experienced swift rise to fame with the publication of ''This Side of Paradise'' (1920). Ironically, the most fabulous happening of all is the fame that has come to him after his death. After a revival of interest in his works during the 1950s, his books have sold over 8 million copies. ''The Great Gatsby'' still sells 300, 000 copies a year. Apart from his own works, there have been three important biographies on him. The first one is ‘The Far Side of Paradise’ by Arthur Mizener, the second is ‘Scott Fitzgerald’ by Andrew Turnbull and the third one is ‘Some Sort of Epic Grandeur’ by Mathew J. Bruccoli. All the three biographies are very different in their approach and depiction of the author's life due to the perceptual differences of the biographers. The reader can very clearly notice the difference between the representations of the life history of the same person in all the three biographies. This paper will try to highlight the perceptual differences of all the three biographies, ‘The Far Side of Paradise’, ‘Scott Fitzgerald’ and ‘Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald’. Keywords: Biography, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mizener, Turnbull, Bruccoli, Perceptions.
Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: Critical Reception and Visual Interpretation
The thesis explores how the literary status of Fitzgerald’s novel published in 1925 evolved from being dismissed to becoming a canonical work of American Literature after the death of its author. The role of criticism and adaptations and how they intertwined to popularize the novel among the academic elite and the general public is examined. Four critical studies in different decades of recent history are analyzed to show the different approaches to the novel as well as its relation to the American Dream. The thesis suggests that the four critical studies discussed reflect viewpoints impacted by the cultural and socio-economic factors that marked the decade of their appearance: Kermit Moyer (1973), Ross Posnock (1984), Ray Canterbery (1999), and Benjamin Shreier (2007). Their approaches demonstrate the many ways The Great Gatsby can be viewed and thus its richness as a text. The three film adaptations of the novel in turn depict directors’ take on the novel as well as exhibiting the limitations, predilections, and technical possibilities of the time of their production: Nugent’s (1949), Clayton’s (1974), and Luhrmann’s (2013). The controversial aspects of these adaptations as indicated by reviews and articles, which evaluate them as to how they present Gatsby and the American Dream, have increased the debate and the interest in the novel. Though the novel is located in the U.S. in the Roaring Twenties associated with the Jazz Age, it continues to speak to present audience by evoking issues related to class, mobility, ethics, and romance.
In the early 1910s the extension of copyright protection to moving-picture adaptations of literary works resulted in the emergence of film rights, altering the economic and institutional constitution of the American literary field. In letters, industry documents, and journalistic articles, authors and studios alike reflected on the importance of preparing fiction for adaptation. The capacity of authors to imagine the afterlives of their prose works at the moment of composition may be called the " transmedial possibility " of fiction. Transmedial possibility, the theoretical complement to Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's concept remediation, inflected the form of several works of the 1920s, including F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby .
Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life. The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature.