F. Scott Fitzgerald did not allow his characters to reach adulthood. Amory Blaine (This Side of Paradise), Benjamin Button, Jay Gatsby, and many others, are exemplary of the author’s intention to comment on the immaturity that characterized what he had termed “the Jazz Age”. Basil Duke Lee, a young character to whom he devoted nine stories at the end of the Twenties, is particularly relevant because he represents Fitzgerald’s first step into a sustained critique that developed into the epochal “Echoes of the Jazz Age”. In this essay, following Basil from childhood to late adolescence, I want to argue that the series presents an anti-Bildungsroman which captures the arrested development of the age.
Antonelli, S. (2022). No Trauma, No Bildung, No Party. F. Scott Fitzgerald, l’età del jazz e Basil Duke Lee. ACOMA, 23(Autunno-Inverno 2022), 54-82.
No Trauma, No Bildung, No Party. F. Scott Fitzgerald, l’età del jazz e Basil Duke Lee
Sara Antonelli
2022-01-01
Abstract
F. Scott Fitzgerald did not allow his characters to reach adulthood. Amory Blaine (This Side of Paradise), Benjamin Button, Jay Gatsby, and many others, are exemplary of the author’s intention to comment on the immaturity that characterized what he had termed “the Jazz Age”. Basil Duke Lee, a young character to whom he devoted nine stories at the end of the Twenties, is particularly relevant because he represents Fitzgerald’s first step into a sustained critique that developed into the epochal “Echoes of the Jazz Age”. In this essay, following Basil from childhood to late adolescence, I want to argue that the series presents an anti-Bildungsroman which captures the arrested development of the age.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
