American Literature Since World War II

American Literature Since World War II

Introduction

The period after the World War II is characterized by nationalist aspirations and cultural traditionalism. The artists of that time responded to the Cold War by writing on behalf of an implicit identity and closing ranks. On the other hand the cultural introspection emerged in 1960s and 1970s due to the unfulfilled promise made by Kennedy as well as the chaos of the Vietnam War. Number of artists started rejecting the tradition and found out different ways to give voices to the excluded minorities. From the years of 1980s to the present, artists have merged the progress of prior years until inclusivity and diversity became ideals for arts along with the political goals (Baym, et al. 2007).

Discussion

American literature since the end of the Second World War

The cultural homogeneity and the political unity in American society was one of the aftermaths of the World War II. Cultural obsession of conformity and stability is reflected in the literature of 1950s as it countered the artistic task of modernism. Several artists tried to represent the themes they thought to be common and necessary for all Americans apart from regional identity, gender, ethnicity or class. The motivations for representing the minorities derived from the major aims of the modern novelist such as Ernest Hemingway, whose “Great American Novel” urged the writers to generalize or universalize their writings so that it may speak to the readers. Some of the writers were also inspired by the writings of William Faulkner to use the regional particularity to come up with the work about history, race and national identity. By the end of the 50s decade, fictions writers started realizing that novelistic conventions are adequate enough to represent the Americana essentially much less existing reality (Baym, et al. 2007). The controversy of “Death of the Novel” also identified that novels were more dependent upon the plot development, symbolism and characters (Lundberg, 1984). Writings of Philip Roth are such examples in which the writer seems to be skeptical of such assumptions that novels cannot portray the current settings adequately. “Defender of the faith” is his one of his short stories in which he sketched out the reality of how religion has been used by people for their own sake as Marx did in this story (see appendix 1).

Poetry of that time also followed the same path as that of prose. Poets of 1950s started experimenting with thematic completeness and formal frankness of unconventional perceptions. Howl written by Allen Ginsberg symbolizes the break in poetry with modernist aspect in which the poet has used oral rhythms, wandering and energetic rejections of the traditionality. His poem portrays the racial, religious and regional tensions of that time (appendix 2). On the other hand, an autobiographical intensity less complicated and more direct style has been used by Robert Lowell in his collections of poems Life Studies (1959). In his poems he turns the pain, confession and catharsis into the words which was ...