MY E-LEARNING CLASS: ENGLISH-AMERICAN LITERARY TRENDS

Much. Khoiri

Trends in literature are almost invariably associated with events in history that occur in the same period. For this reason, a knowledge of history is an important addition to the study of developments taking place in the fields of prose, poetry, and drama. In the following are presented the trends in English and American Literature.

A. TRENDS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Bentley (1972: 199-205) outlines the trends in English literature, setting out in chronological sequence the chief historical influences in each period, and the literary changes that accompanied them.

1. The Elizabethan Age (1550-1625)

(a) Historical Background

· Tremendous changes in political, commercial and social life as a result of the Reformation and the Renaissance.

· Period marked by a strong spirit of nationalism. An age of inquiry, exploration and discovery.

· Religious toleration for both Catholics and Protestants.

· Social contentment owing to rapid increase in wealth, and improvement in living conditions.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· A seriousness of purpose and lofty moral ideals.

· Most writers possessed a splendid imagination, incorporating heroes, classical mythology, ladies, dwarfs, demons, etc.

· Beauty was considered the chief quality of nature and all common things.

· Essentially an age of poetry: (i) the development of non-dramatic and lyrical verse by Spencer; (ii) the appearance of the sonnet as a medium for poetic expression.

· Marked influence of the Italian writers.

· Many significant developments in drama from miracle plays to Shakespeare.

· Prose became important for the first time with the philosophical works of Bacon, histories of Camden and Knox, and records of travel by Hakluyt and Purchas.

2. The Puritan Age (1625-1660)

(a) Historical Background

· An age of social conflict, moral and political revolution.

· The puritan movement dominated English life. Its objectives were (i) personal righteousness; (ii) civil and religious liberty.

· Great political struggles between King and Parliament. The importance of the divine right theory.

· The disappearance of any possibility of a united Protestant church.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· Literature was confused owing to the breaking up of old ideals.

· The enthusiasm of the Elizabethan age was replaced by spiritual gloom and pessimism.

· Literature was closely associated with divinity. This brought with it a sublime style of expression.

· A lack of romantic ardour.

· New schools of poetry: (i) The cavalier poets who developed song lyrics; (ii) Long poems with a religious background. Milton and the use of blank verse; (iii) Metaphysical poets who experimented with various verse forms.

· Developments in prose writing included the appearance of allegory and satire. A simple and more flexible prose style was in evidence.

3. The Restoration Period (1660-1700)

(a) Historical Background

· A reaction against the restraint and dignity of Puritanism.

· An abandonment of the decencies of life. Social and political excesses brought about a crisis in English History.

· Lack of stability, or bribery and corruption in the court.

· The temporary disappearance of British supremacy in sea power; a lack of enthusiasm for colonial expansion.

· Despotism and injustice both in Parliament and the English judiciary.

· The appearance of two political parties—the Whigs and the Tories.

· The Great Plague and the Fire of London.

· The Bondless Revolution of 1688 and the restoration of Protestant rulers.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· The strong influence of French writers and French literary works.

· The appearance of realism and a general conciseness of expression.

· The development of an elegant style and precision in what was written.

· Satire became important with such writers as Dryden and Butler.

· The emergence of a more direct prose style. Many critical and philosophical essays.

· A reaction against the obscurity of the metaphysical poets. A tendency to abandon lyrical and narrative poetry in favor of satire and didacticism.

· Vulgar realism an immorality in drama.

4. The Classic (Augustan) Age (1700-1750)

(a) Historical Background

· An age of rapid social development in England. The beginning of private clubs and coffee houses in London.

· Political reform came as a result of the dissatisfaction experienced in the reign of the Stuart kings.

· Renewed national enthusiasm following the great victories of Marlborough on the Continent.

· A tendency towards political and religious tolerance.

· The demand for information and the growth of better facilities for education.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· The tendency to write according to well-defined rules, reminiscent of the Classical writers.

· Life was regarded critically, the intellect being favored more than the imagination.

· A demand that writers should suppress emotion and enthusiasm and use only direct and precise forms of expression.

· Poetry to conform to the classics of Horace and Aristotle. Popularity of stopped couplet; better lyrical verse.

· The appearance of periodicals; works of Addison and Steele.

· Early developments of the novel. Defoe the first to emphasize both narrative and character in a prose work.

5. The Transition Period (18^th Century Period) (1750-1800)

(a) Historical Background

· Great political progress—the growth of democracy and the establishment of the cabinet system.

· Greater emphasis on education and the establishment of schools. More books and periodicals available.

· The emergence of new religious groups, particularly that of the Methodists.

· Great journeys of exploration and settlement of new lands beyond the seas. The beginning of British Imperialism.

· Victories in foreign wars against France brought added wealth and vast new victories.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· A renewed interest in earlier forms of literature such as ballad, romance, etc.

· A revolt against artificiality and a return to natural themes.

· Poetry becomes more imaginative and lyrical. A revival of early metrical forms, such as blank verse.

· Drama dominated by the comedy of manners of Goldsmith and Sheridan.

· A great age of prose. New developments in the novel. Fielding and Richardson; Gibson (History) and Swift (Satire).

6. The Romantic Age (1800-1837)

(a) Historical Background

· The triumph of democracy in government.

· Rapid growth of individual freedom. Liberty becomes the ideal.

· English political and social life greatly affected by the French Revolution. Fear of revolution in England.

· A period of great economic change. Vast increase in wealth; capitalism. England becomes “the workshop of the world.”

· Wide industrial disturbances. A demand for better working conditions. The emergence of trade unions.

· Enormous British prestige abroad after the defeat of Napoleon. Further developments in overseas empires.

· Humanitarianism—the abolition of slavery, reforms of unjust laws.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· A close association between romanticism in literature and democracy in government.

· The development of a keen interest in nature.

· Great writers adopted a philosophical and critical attitude towards life, with its sorrows, pleasure and standards of social behavior.

· Poetry imaginative and fancy free. Emphasis on lyrical verse with simplicity and subject matter and style.

· Several important development in prose: (i) extension of the field of the novel by Scott. Women novelists. (Austen); (ii) new forms of the English essay; e.g. Lamb, Hazlitt and de Quincey.

7. The Victorian Age (1837-1900)

(a) Historical Background

· Democracy becomes the established order of the day. The power of the monarch disappears.

· New advances in reform for education, health and humanitarianism.

· Recognition of political freedom and religious tolerance.

· Great social unrest. The appearance of groups opposed to the acceptance of traditional ideals.

· An age of comparative peace , with enormous expansion of British interests abroad.

· Remarkable progress in science and mechanical inventions. This brought about a revolution in transport and industry.

· The emergence of great and new world powers. U.S.A.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· A natural dignity and a simplicity of expression in all forms of literature.

· A departure from the purely artistic standards in literature and an emphasis on moral purpose.

· An interest in scientific themes and a tendency to lead and teach.

· Essentially an age of prose: (i) The novel established as a form of literary entertainment. Dickens, Thackeray, etc. (ii) Great popularity of the newspaper, magazine and short story; (iii) Little interest in the English essay.

· Poetry marked by: (i) a wide range of subject matter; (ii) restraint and convention; (iii) emphasis on human problems and reactions.

· An age of idealism; emphasis on love, truth, justice, brotherhood.

8. The Twentieth Century

(a) Historical Background

· Marked by revolt against accepted ideals, particularly in religion and economics.

· The emergence of new political and economic ideals—socialism and capitalism.

· Literature greatly influenced by two great world conflicts, which brought in their aftermath, great human suffering and vast changes in international relations. This was associated with the rise of new world powers—China, Japan, etc.

· The rise and fall of the great totalitarian states—Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

· The changes wrought by the world economic depression of 1929.

· The age of the atom; the concept of man’s capacity for complete self-destruction.

· The conquest of space, and new ideas of intercontinental transport and communication.

(b) Main Literary Characteristics

· Freedom of choice in subject matter, and the abandonment of the conventions of the Victorian Age.

· A vigorous realism of subject matter, imagery and diction.

· A close kinship between man, animal, and nature.

· Greater use of unconventional methods of presentation: symbolism, impressionism, naturalism, etc.

· The expression of individuality and the cultivation of a personal attitude.

· An age of experiment in all forms of literature. The renewal of the personal essay; the novel as a medium for propaganda; the abstract ideas of poetry, etc.

· Literature no longer dominated by the British writers; new and important trends from U.S.A, Europe, Russia and Australia.

· Accent on the short story and biography.

· A revival of English and American drama.

B. TRENDS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

Despite the fact that periods in literature are named for rulers, historical events, intellectual or political or religious movements, or artistic styles, the naming of the literary trends in America literature is a bit different from that in English literature. Adapted from http://home.comcast.net/~bbedingfield/Agnieszka/

LiteraryPeriods.htm, retrieved 25 May 2010), here is Bedingfield’s (2002) outline of the trends in American literature which includes eight categories: Pre-settlement, Puritanism, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, and Post-World War II.

1. Pre-Settlement Period (< 1620s)

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Oral literature relaying on performance · Most texts collected and written down in the end of 19th and beginning of 20th century · Distinguishable by form, content, and style - thus correspond to the most fundamental features of literature · Types of oral narratives: (i) Origin and Emergence Stories, (ii) Historical Narratives, (iii) Culture Hero Stories, (iv) Trickster Tales	Anonymous	1452 - Gutenberg invents a printing press. 1492, 12 Oct. - Columbus discovers America, landing on an island in the Bahamas. 1507 - Martin Waldseemuller, geographer, names the new land "America" for Vespucci. 1603 - Elizabeth I dies; James I becomes king of England 1607 - Capt. John Smith founds Jamestown in Virginia. 1584 - Walter Ralegh lands on "island" of Roanoke; names it "Virginia" for Queen Elizabeth.

2. Puritanism (1620s – 1783)

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Forms of writing: - histories - diaries - chronicles - poetry - sermons: 1. explanation of biblical quotation 2. interpretation 3. application to the life of the colony · Role of sermons: > new argument in the ongoing theological debates > a part of the political process (“Election Day’s.”) > scaring the congregation back into religious life (“jeremiads”) · Chronicles - describe the earthly in terms of the eternal · Literal truth substituted with potential symbolic lesson · No novels – they divert people’s attention from work · Writing should have a practical purpose · Belief in America being the “promised land” and Americans being the “chosen people” · Frequent religious references · Often plain style so that common people can understand	Poetry: Anne Bradstreet (1612 – 1672) Michael Wigglesworth (1631 – 1705) Edward Taylor (1645 – 1729) Diaries/Chronicles/Histories: William Bradford (1590 – 1657) John Winthrop (1588 – 1649) Cotton Mather (1663 – 1728) Edward Johnson (1598 – 1672) Mary Rowlandson (c.1636 – c.1678) Sermons: Jonathan Edwards (1703 – 1758)	1620 - Mayflower, Puritans found Plymouth Plantation 1630 - arrival of Arbella Massachusetts Bay Colony founded 1636 - Harvard University founded near Boston 1650 - Bradstreet, Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up In America 1662 - Wigglesworth, The Day of Doom 1704 - first newspaper ~> in Boston 1741 - Johnson, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” 1741-61 – The Great Awakening PuritAn influence on American Values: · Urge to succeed and exceed · Belief that hard work necessary for happiness · Cult of money -> money indicator · Conviction that Americans are the chosen people

3. Enlightenment (2nd half 18th century): The Age of Reason

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Rational approach to the world, belief in progress. · Pragmatism – truth measured by practical experience, law of nature · Deism – God created the world but has no influence on human lives · Idealism – conviction of the universal sense of right and wrong; belief in essential goodness of man · Interest in human nature	Political Pamphlets Philosophical / Religious Tracts: Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809) Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) Alexander Hamilton (1757 – 1804)	1773 - Boston Tea Party 1775-83 – American Revolution 1776, 4 July – Declaration of Independence 1783 - Treaty of Paris 1787-88 - Federalist Papers: Alex. Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison 1789 - American Constitution 1789-1799 - French Revolution

4. Romanticism (1820s – 1861): The American Renaissance

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Explored what it meant to be an American, an American artist. · Looked at American government and political problems · The problems of war and Black slavery · Emerging materialism and conformity · Influence of immigration, new customs and tradition. · Sexuality; relationships between men and women · The power of nature · Individualism, emphasis on destructive effect of society on individual. · Idealism. · Spontaneity in thought and action. · Not an optimistic vision of America; pictures of human frailty, weakness, limitation. · Writers spoke not directly but obliquely, ambiguously. · Christianity a valuable source of symbols. · Stories built around dreams. · Stories of emblematic pilgrimages or journeys. · Hero seems to represent a general type of person. · Belief that evil is merely the absence of good. · Through the symbolism of writing, portrayal of the reality beyond what’s visible, thus putting into practice the central notion of Transcendental thought. · Critique of formalized church, faith must come from within. TRANSCENDENTALISM (1835 – 1860) A New England movement rooted in Romanticism and post-Kantian idealism. Basically religious, emphasized role and importance of individual conscience and value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller. Critical of formalized religion. All constructive practical activity, great literature viewed as an expression of the divine spirit. An ambition to achieve vivid perception of the divine as it operates in common life which would lead to personal cultivation. Insistence on authority of individual conscience A trust in the individual, democracy, possibility of continued change for the better A need to see beyond what is before our eyes, to see a deeper significance, a transcendent reality. Intellectual eclecticism; a vague conception of the God-like nature of human spirit. Nature conceived of not as a machine but as an organism, symbol and analogue of the mind Spontaneous activity of the creative artist seen as the highest achievement. GOTHIC ROMANCE: · More interest in action than in the development of character. · Action often fantastic, allegorical, interest in the supernatural, terror, madness. · Characters have mysterious origins; tend to be ideal, exaggerated, more types. · Suspense and mystery involving fantastic and supernatural, interest in light and shade. · Interest in evil, its origins · Descriptions of various mental states often verging on the abnormal.	Prose: · Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) · James Fennimore Cooper (1789 – 1851) · William Cullen Bryant (1794 – 1878) · Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) · Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882) · Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864) · Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850) · Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862) · Herman Melville (1819 – 1891) · Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811- 1896) · Louisa May Alcott (1832 – 1888) Poetry: “The Boston Brahmins” · Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) · Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 – 1894) · James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891) · Walt Whitman (1819 – 1892) · Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)	1812 – War with England 1815-50 – Westward Expansion 1846-48 – Mexican War 1849 – California gold rush 1861-1865 – Civil War 1863 - Gettysburg Address Emerson, Nature (1836) Poe, The Raven (1845) Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (1850) Melville, Moby Dick (1851) Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) Thoreau Walden (1854) Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

5. Realism (1860s – 1890s)

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Life presented with fidelity. · Fidelity in presenting the inner workings of the mind. · The analysis of thought and feeling. · Function of environment in shaping the character. · Set in present or recent past. · Colloquial speech. · Commonplace characters · Exposed political corruption, economic inequity, business deception, the exploitation of labor, women rights problems, racial inequity. · Described the relationship between the economic transformation of America and its moral condition. · Introduction of a new kind of characters: (i) industrial workers and rural poor, (ii) ambitious businessman and vagrants, (iii) prostitutes, (iv) unheroic soldiers. · Rise of what critic Warner Berthoff calls “the literature of argument” – works in sociology, philosophy, psychology. REGIONAL WRITING (“local color”) · Desire to preserve distinctive ways of life before industrialization dispersed or homogenized them. · coming to terms with the harsh realities of the “new times”. · rapid growth of magazines creating a new, largely female audience for short fiction. · immortalizing linguistic features. · many colorists women describing a patriarchal society from female perspective .	Prose: Mark Twain (1835–1910) Henry James (1843 – 1916) William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920) “Local Color” Sarah Orne Jewett (1849 – 1909) Kate Chopin (1851 – 1904) Bret Harte (1836 – 1902) Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935) Poetry: Edward Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935) Robert Frost (1874 – 1963) Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)	1860 – Abraham Lincoln elected President 1861-65 – Civil War 1863, 1 Jan – Emancipation Proclamation: slavery abolished 1865 – 13^th Amendment (abolition of slavery) 1869 – first transcontinental railroad 1870s – few ndividuals take control of big industries: steal, railroad, oil, meat-packing 1859 – Darwin’s The Origin of Species 1870 – Darwin’s Descent of Man James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) Frost The Road Not Taken (1916)

6. Naturalism (1890s ~> 1950s)

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Trend rather than a movement; never formalized nor dominated by the influence of a single writer. · A more extreme, intensified version of realism. · Shows more unpleasant, ugly, shocking aspects of life. · Objective picture of reality viewed with scientific detachment. · Determinism – man’s life is dominated by the forces he cannot control: biological instincts, social environment. · No free will, no place for moral judgment. · Pessimism · Disillusionment with the dream of success; collapse of the predominantly agrarian myth. · Struggle of an individual to adopt to the environment. · Society as something stable, its predictability unabled one to present a universal human situation through accurate representation of particulars. · Faith in society and art.	Prose: Henry Adams (1838 – 1918) Hamlin Garland (1860 – 1940) Frank Norris (1870 – 1902) Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900) Theodore Dreiser (1871 – 1945) Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) Jack London (1879 – 1916) Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951) Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968) John Steinbeck (1902 – 1968) Poetry: Edgar Lee Masters (1869 – 1950)	1898 – Spanish-American War 1901 - Theodore Roosevelt elected President 1903 - first powered airplane flight Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895) Lewis, Babbitt (1922) Dreiser An American Tragedy (1925)

7. Modernism (1914-1945)

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS	HISTORICAL EVENTS
· Construction out of fragments, collage technique, montage of images (cinema). · The ideal of art is to regain the whole (like in The Waste Land). · Work structured as a quest for the very coherence it seems to lack at the surface; order found in art (Porter), religion (Eliot). · Sense of discontinuity, harmony destroyed in WWI . · Omission: of explanations, interpretations, connections, summaries, continuity. · Arbitrary beginning, advancement without explanation, end without resolution. · Shifts in perspective, voice and tone . · Experimentation with time: flashback, leaps to the future. · Rhetoric understated, ironic. · Symbols and images instead statements. · Use of myth –escape from dramatic present, Christianity also a myth (Faulkner). · World of random possibilities. · Search for truth. · Subject often the literary work itself (the only meaningful activity is the search for meaning carried out in art). · Opposition to mass culture, belief that art is for the elites. · References to literary, historical, philosophical, religious past to remind the reader of old, lost coherence. · Secularization of religion, erosion of religious belief, lose of mystery . · Nitze declared God was dead and man was on his own. Undermining of the belief in history as a linear concept (Darwin). · Distrust of family bonds, family no longer the safe haven (Freud). · Anti-female tendency, “new woman”, a flapper – a carrier of chaos; Widespread male anxiety about a female “takeover” – some writers (Lawrence, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) believe that women conspired with the new technology to render their male contemporaries socially and even sexually impotent. Fragments of popular culture, dream imagery. · Parodies. · Use of language previously considered improper: colloquial, slang, uneducated · Directness, compression, vividness ~> significance of short story. · First person narration, one character’s point of view (truth does not exist objectively) A naïve or marginal person as narrator (a child, an outsider) to convey the reality of confusion. · Alienation of the individual. · Experimental, self conscious manipulation of form. · Stream of consciousness, interior monologue. · Psychological influences: Freud, Young . · Fascination with machines · Vision of social breakdown, society in decay. · Faith in art .	Prose Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946) Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) John Dos Passos (1896 – 1970) F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) William Faulkner (1897 – 1962) Sherwood Anderson (1876–1941) Katherine Anne Porter (1890 – 1980) Zora Neale Hurston (1901?–1960) Thomas Wolfe (1900 – 1938) Nathaniel West (1903 – 1940) Willa Cather (1873 – 1947) Henry Miller (1891 – 1980) Anais Nin (1903 – 1977) Poetry: Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) William Carlos William (1883 – 1963) Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) “Imagists:” Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972) H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) (1886 – 1961) Amy Lowell (1874 - 1925) Marianne Moore (1887 – 1972) e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962) Archibald MacLeish (1892 – 1982) Hart Crane (1899 – 1932) “Fugitives:” John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) Allen Tate (1899 – 1979) Drama: Eugene O’Neill (1888 – 1953) Thorton Wilder (1897 – 1975) Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961	1914-18 – World War I 1917 – US enters the War, Russian Revolution 1918 – worldwide flu epidemic Jan 1919 – Prohibition (18^th Amendment) 1920 – women given the vote (19^th Am.) 1920s – Henry Ford’s assembly-line, cars become affordable 1921 – Sacco-Vanzetti case 1924 – Immigration Act, quota systems: 1921, 1924. 1927 – first non stop solo flight across Atlantic 1928 – Mussolini’s comes to power in Italy 1929 – first motion picture with sound stock market crash, Depression begins 1932 – F. Delano Roosevelt becomes President 1933 – 18^th Amendment repealed 1933 – Hitler’s dictatorship in Germany 1936-39 – Spanish Civil War 1941, 7 Dec – Pearl Harbor 1945, 6 Aug – Hiroshima atomic bomb Influential thinkers: Sigmunt Freud (1856 – 1939) Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) 1848 – Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (1919) Eliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1920) Eliot, The Waste Land (1922) Stevens, Anecdote of the Jar (1923) Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925) Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929) Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) Dos Passos, The 42^nd Parallel (1930) Faulkner, Light in August (1932) Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936) Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men (1937) Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) West, The Day of the Locust (1939) Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952) Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952 )

8. Post-World War II (1945 - )

CHARACTERISTICS	WRITERS		HISTORICAL EVENTS
Southern writers: - grotesque. - fascination with extreme and perverse incongruities of character and scene. - cultivation of verbal effect - problem of the situation of the Blacks in the South . - sense of history. - no engagement with the public and social happenings. The Beat Generation: - inspiration from Whitman, Buddha, eastern religion, drugs . - spontaneity, opposition to constricting forms – poetic or political . - rhetorical shock . - language of drug subculture, Black music, jazz milieu. - references to mythical religion. - comic touches. POST-MODERNISM v exploration of fantasies and extremities of experience. v v use of myth, fantasy, fairy tale. v self-conscious style. v the mirror effect – story within the story . v parodies of other literary styles, formal and linguistic experimentation. v irony, grotesque. v “black humor” – employing elements of cruelty and shock to make readers see the ugly, the awful in a new way. v novel an independent art form creating its own universe, its own rules. v stresses artificiality of its worlds. v literature a game between an author and a reader ß participation. v exaggeration, repetition, unexpected view point, dislocation. v disruption of cause-and-effect narration, structure episodic (feeling of artificiality) . v characters two-dimensional, flat, grotesque, alien. v use of popular culture v first person narration – can be an animal . v celebration of chaos, acceptance of entropy (world moving towards inert uniformity and disintegration, a measure of the lack of order in a system, that includes the idea that the lack of order increases over a period in time). v doubt if literature can reflect any reality, even disintegrating one v less confidence in art and hence the artist. v “naïve” childlike narration. v myth, religion, history presented as arbitrary constructs of the human mind . v moral relativity. v interest in the problems of literary creation.	PROSE Southern writers: Eudora Welty (1909 - 2001) Flannery O’Connor (1925– 1964) Carson McCullers (1917 – 1967) Truman Capote (1924 – 1984) Walker Percy (1916 - 1990) William Styron (b. 1925) New York writers: Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005) Philip Roth (b. 1933) Bernard Malamud (1914 - 1986) J.D. Salinger (b. 1919) Middle America writers: John Updike (b. 1932) Norman Mailer (b. 1923) Joseph Heller (b. 1923) The Beat Generation: Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969) Afro-American Writers: Richard Wright (1908 –1960) Ralph Ellison (1914 - 1994) James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) Alice Walker (b. 1944) Post-Modernism: Vladimir Nabokov (1899– 1977) Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937) John Barth (b. 1930) Donald Barthelme (1931 - 1989) William Burroughs (1914 - 97) William Gaddis (1922 - 1998) Robert Coover (b. 1932) Joseph Heller (b. 1923) Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007) Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938) Asian American Writers Maxine H. Kingston (b. 1940) Amy Tan (b. 1952) Jade Snow Wong (b. 1922) Frank Chin (b. 1940) John Okada ( 1923 - 1971)	POETRY The Beat Generation: Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997) Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) Confessional Poets: Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977) Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) John Berryman (1914 – 1972) Theodore Roethke (1908 – 1963) Anne Sexton (1928 – 1974) Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson (1910 – 1970) Robert Creeley (b. 1926) Robert Duncan (1919 - 1988) Denise Levertov (1923 - 1997) New York Poets: Frank O’Hara (1926 – 1966) John Ashbery (b. 1927) Kenneth Koch (b. 1925) James Schuyler (1923 - 1991) Afro-American Poets: Langston Hughes(1902–1967) Countee Cullen (1903 – 1946) LeRoy Jones [Amiri Baraka] (b. 1934) Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000) DRAMA Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Tennessee Williams (1911-83) Edward Albee (b. 1928) Sam Shepard (b. 1943) David Mamet (b. 1947) August Wilson (b. 1945) David Hwang (b. 1957)	1945, 6 Aug – Hiroshima bomb 1950-53 – Korean War 1950-54 – McCarthy’s era 1954 – end of school segregation 1960s – Civil Rights movement 1960 – J. F. Kennedy President 1962 – Cuban missile crisis 1963, Nov 22 – JFK assassination 1964-75 – Vietnam War 1965 – Malcolm X assassination 1968 – Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated 1969 – first man on the Moon 1972-74 – Watergate Scandal 1974 – Richard Nixon’s resignation 1981 – Ronald Reagan President Wright, Native Son (1940) Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (1948) Miller, Death of a Salesman (1949) Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951) Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Ginsberg, Howl (1956) O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956) Kerouac, On the Road (1957) Updike, Rabbit, Run (1960) Heller, Catch-22 (1961) Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962) Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) Bellow, Herzog (1964) Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) Barthelme, Snow White (1967) Barth, Lost in the Funhouse (1968) Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)