Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Youth, Maturation, and Adult Sexuality
- Chapter 2 The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence
- Chapter 3 The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Chapter 4 “The Modern Old Master”
- Chapter 5 “I Was Gone Again”
- Chapter 6 Fitzgerald’s Expatriate Years and the European Stories
- Chapter 7 Legends of Zelda
- Chapter 8 Fitzgerald’s Nonfiction
- Chapter 9 Great Art, Small Art, and Modernist Cachet
- Chapter 10 Fitzgerald and Hollywood
- Chapter 11 Fitzgerald’s Cultural and Critical Reputation in the Twenty-First Century
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Youth, Maturation, and Adult Sexuality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Cambridge Companions To Literature
- The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Youth, Maturation, and Adult Sexuality
- Chapter 2 The Beautiful and Damned and Literary Decadence
- Chapter 3 The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Chapter 4 “The Modern Old Master”
- Chapter 5 “I Was Gone Again”
- Chapter 6 Fitzgerald’s Expatriate Years and the European Stories
- Chapter 7 Legends of Zelda
- Chapter 8 Fitzgerald’s Nonfiction
- Chapter 9 Great Art, Small Art, and Modernist Cachet
- Chapter 10 Fitzgerald and Hollywood
- Chapter 11 Fitzgerald’s Cultural and Critical Reputation in the Twenty-First Century
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the varied meanings of “youth” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels, short stories, and nonfiction. Traditionally, this theme has been examined to the writer’s disadvantage as evidence of his unfortunate investment in adolescence and young adulthood and his dread of senescence, which for him usually set in at the age of thirty. This survey argues that age consciousness was endemic throughout early twentieth-century American culture, with psychologist G. Stanley Hall in particular defining youth as a period of fiery intensity soon lost to the enervating compromises of middle age. Fitzgerald’s literary treatment of this issue helped rewrite the adolescent experience, but his fear of growing old created curious anxieties about sexuality and sex itself, which is why his fiction typically fixates on the kiss instead of coitus.
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- The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald , pp. 15 - 37Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023