The Lost Generation in Biofiction

The aim of this paper is to analyze the presentation of the concept of the Lost Generation as presented in the novelistic re-writings of the lives of the great American authors F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Their life stories have been repeatedly used as plot lines in postmodern biofictions, which underline the connection between fiction, biography, and autobiography by developing texts that are “both self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon 2003: 5). The process of creating such texts involves different appropriations of facts, fictional characters, literary works and practices, themes and subjects, which are re-ordered in a constantly changing world of doubling, mirror reflections and fluctuations constructing concepts of the time and culture in a literary form from a most recent perspective. The Lost Generation as such concept is a constitutive part in these narratives allowing for the plausibility and uniqueness of the story. This paper unravels the notions of the Lost Generation in the biofiction genre and the techniques used for that portrayal.
Key words: Lost Generation, biofiction, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway