"The Modernist Nation examines why America's modern literary movements have come to be characterized as "generations" and "renaissances," from the Lost Generation and the Beat Generation to the Harlem, Southern, and San Francisco Renaissances. The metaphor of rebirth, Michael Soto argues, offered and continues to offer American writers a conceptual shorthand for imagining American cultural history, especially as a departure from Old World (English) trappings." "Soto highlights the interracial dynamics of American literary movements, touching on authors as varied as Malcolm Cowley, W. E. B. DuBois, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Gertrude Stein, and Jack Kerouac. After assessing the origins of the Lost Generation and the Harlem Renaissance, Soto traces the rise of the "bohemian artist" narrative, and demonstrates how a polyethnic cast of writers and critics envisioned American literary production in terms of symbolic rebirth."--BOOK JACKET.