On 'Taine's concept of the 'Milieu'

Literature did not come out of air. “It was conditioned by three earthy elements: race, milieu, moment,” says Hippolyte Taine, the famous French sociologist.

The word milieu means, the ‘socio-cultural context’.

For example, The Jazz Age was the milieu from which Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby emerged.

The Great Gatsby (1925) by the American F. Scott Fitzgerald follows a host of interesting characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island. Interestingly, the term ‘Jazz Age’ was also invented by Scott Fitzgerald himself!

The Jazz Age, synonymous with the Roaring Twenties, resulted in wide cultural changes in the West. The Great Gatsby provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties – a decade known for its great economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music (African American), flapper culture and other tumultuous criminal activities too. These socio-cultural contexts are realistically depicted in Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby.

PS: [II MAs] This note is a continuation on the ‘recurrent ideas in theory’ part that we discussed in class today.

Hope you get yourself familiar with these recurrent ideas in theory remarkably well, and get ready for a 15 minute-objective type-Snap Test to be conducted in your class on Friday, 15 July 2016 And yes! 'Privileged bunking' not allowed for snap test. :-)

All the best!