Literary Movement: Contemporary Literature 1950 to Present

1
Literary MovementContemporary Literature1950
to Present

• Life through multiple windows

2
Historical Context

• 1953 Korean War ends
• 1957 Soviet Unions launch of Sputnik I begins
  the space race with the U.S.
• 1963 Martin Luthers I have a dream speech
• 1963 JFKs assassination
• 1965 U.S. escalates involvement in Vietnam War
• 1969 First humans walk on the moon
• 1974 Watergate scandal forces President Nixons
  resignation
• 1987 U.S. stock market crashes
• 1990-91 Operation Desert Storm
• 1990s Internet rises as major form of
  communication

3
Worldview

• The second half of the twentieth century has seen
  the rise of postmodernism
• A philosophical stance which claims that it is
  impossible to make grand statementsmeta-narrative
  sabout the structures of society or about
  historic causation, because everything we
  perceive, express, and interpret is influenced by
  our gender, class, and culture knowledge is
  partial and situated, and no one interpretation
  is superior to another.
• from www.answers.com
• Influences Modernism, Technology
• Postmodernism embraces fragmentation and
  relativism.
• Miss Andersons metaphor Life through multiple
  windows

4
Common Elements of the Literature

• Diversity! Diversity in genre (non-fiction,
  fiction, poetry), style, form, subject matter,
  and authors cultural and religious backgrounds
• Allowance for multiple meanings and multiple
  worlds, even within a work of literature
• Flourishing of creative non-fiction
• New Journalist writers began to incorporate
  personal opinion and experience into nonfiction
  writing.
• Flourishing of poetry
• Move from the impersonal, academic tone of
  modernist poetry toward personal themes
• Beat Poets and Confessional Poets

5
Famous Authors

• Fiction John Updike, Amy Tan, Kurt Vonnegut,
  Alice Walker
• Non-fiction Truman Capote, Annie Dillard, Jack
  Kerouac
• Poetry Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, Sylvia
  Plath, Anne Sexton, Billy Collins