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Diego Chavarra Snchez A91711

Contemporary Literature

(1939 Present)

Historical Overview

World War II (1939 1945)

Began when Britain and France declared war on Germany after Hitlers

armies invaded Poland.

U.S. was drug into the war on Dec. 7 1941, when Japan bombed the U.S.

naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The attack on Pearl Harbor killed over 2,395 Americans and

destroyed / damaged 21 ships and 323 aircrafts.

Until this attack, the U.S. had remained neutral (although we had

provided financial support to those countries fighting Germany, Italy,

and Japan).

World War II - U.S. response Atomic Bomb.

The U.S. dropped atomic bombs that obliterated two Japanese cities.

Bomb on Nagasaki / Bomb on Hiroshima from the U.S. airplane

Enola Gay.

Many Americans disapproved of the use of the atomic bomb to end

WWII, but most agreed with the purpose of the war itself.

o Fighting against tyranny and regimes that would destroy the

American way of life.

The Cold War 1945 1991 (ideological battle between Capitalism and

Communism).

The Soviet Union developed nuclear weapons in the 50s and 60s

created conflict with the U.S.

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The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

70s winding down of the Vietnam War.

Watergate Scandal 1974 forced the resignation of U.S. president,

Richard Nixon.

80s me generation.

Individual enjoyment and material success seemed to overshadow

other concerns.

Attack on September 11, 2001.

killed three thousand civilians (damaging blow to the countrieseconomy).

War on Terrorism.

The Digital Revolution and Economic Prosperity

Introduction of the computer.

50s and 60s businesses and governments were revolutionized by

large mainframe computers.

80s and 90s desktop computers appeared in schools, offices, and

homes.

Late 90s internet communication emerged along with wireless

telephone technology.

All of these innovations fueled a surge in the stock market in the 90s.

Contemporary Fiction

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Diversity and Vitality.

Postmodern a term used to describe contemporary American

culture - still in the process of being defined.

Postmodernism sees contemporary culture as a change a

development or a departure from modernism.

o Postmodern writers use many of the same tools that the

modernists used; although, they are constructing a body of

literature that is completely different from that produced by the

modernists.

Characteristics of postmodernism.

Allowing multiple meanings and multiple worlds.

Worlds: realistic, literal, past, and dreamlike / metaphorical.

Narrators and characters may tell different versions of a story, or a

story may deliberately accommodate several valid interpretations.

Intensely self-conscious.

o Comment on themselves / criticize themselves.

Blending of fiction with nonfiction.

Uses the past fearlessly (invigorate the old by means of the new).

Contemporary Nonfiction

Breaking the Barriers.

Until this point, nonfiction meant everything that wasnt fiction. (Many

times, nonfiction writers were lumped together with journalists).

Since the 70s, this idea has changed dramatically.

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o Featured reviews now discuss the art (not just the factual

content) of books on computers, architecture, travel, history,

etc.

o Lists of bestsellers which have always included self-helpbooks, now regularly feature memoirs, biographies, and

histories.

Contemporary Poetry

Varied and Intensely Personal.

Decline of Modernism.

o A generation had returned from war to a country where

conformity and material success were the main values.

Projective Verse.

o Led by Black Mountain Poets: Charles Olson, Robert Duncan,

and Robert Creeley.

o Open-form treating each poem as an individual entity,

creating its own form as it proceeded.

o Open-form poems avoided regular meter and rhyme and

aimed to imitate the spontaneity and complexity of reality itself.

New journalism

In the 1960s, new journalism (or literary journalism) began to appear.

Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, they attracted

attention by describing contemporary culture and actual events in strongly

individual voices.

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Use many of the devices of fiction, including complex characterization, plot,

suspense, setting, symbolism, and irony.

Sometimes the lines are blurred new journalists arent necessarily

objective.

Example: Capotes In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel that tells the story of

an actual criminal case, but in a novelistic style.

The beat poets

1956: Allen Ginsbergs long poem Howl came out .

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving

hysterical naked.

How addresses the concerns of contemporary life.

The injustices of modern life.

The importance of the imagination (these would become principal themes

of the next decades poetry).

History of the human heart

Today American poetry is characterized by diversity.

Much contemporary poetry has a democratic quality, often influenced by the

works of Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams.

Contemporary poets often write in the language of common speech, and do

not hesitate to shock with their language, attitudes, and details of private

lives.