UNIT 4 Postwar Literature PDF

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UNIT 4: POSTWAR LITERATURE 1. REALISM AND NATURALISM (From the 30s to the 50s) EARLY 30s 

Social Anger and Economic Depression. o Social protest. o Paper: Partisan Review and The New Masses. o John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (1939) o Other authors: Thomas Wolfe, Henry Miller, and Nathanael West.

LATE 30s:   

Southern writers, “The fugitives”: John Crowe Ramson, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren. I'll take my Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930) Also women: Katherine Anne Porter.

40s AND 50s: WWII    

(1939-1945): Atomic Bombs and Cold War. “Age of Anxiety / Contention”: Baby Boom. Suburb Craze.

LITERARY MANIFESTATIONS    

War Novels: The Naked and the Dead (1948), From Here to eternity (1951) Southern Writers: Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers. Jewish-American Writers: Saul Bellow, Isaac Singer, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth. Poets: Randall Jarrell, Karl Shapiro, Robert Lowell.

PAPERBACKS FLOURISH  

Detective novels: Strangers on a Train (1950) Pornographic novels: Tropic og Cancer (1934), Blackspring (1936), Lolita (1955).

ALIENATION LITERATURE   

The Catcher in the rye (1951) Bellow's The Adventurers of Augie March (1953) J-D. Salinger (1919-2010): o Catcher in the Rye (1951) o Nine Stories (1953) o Fanny and Zooney (1961)

o Raise High the Roof, Carpenters (1962)

Carson Mccullers 

Carson McCullers was born in Lula Carso Smith on February 19 th, 1917, in Columbus, Georgia. A promising pianist, McCullers enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York when she was seventeenth, but lacking the money for tuition, she did not attend classes. Eventually she studied writing at New York University and Columbia University, led to the publication of her first short story, “Wunderkind”, in Story magazine.

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In 1937, Carson married fellow writer James Reeves McCullers. Less than three years later when she was twenty-three, she published her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. She went on to write Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café , and Clock Without Hands, among other works. The recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships, McCullers also won awards for her Broadway stage adaptation of The member of the Wedding.

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THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. When The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers' literary debut, was first published by Houghton Mifflin, on June 4, 1940, the twenty-threeyear-old author became a literary sensation virtually overnight.  The novel is considered McCullers' finest work, an enduring masterpiece that was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the top one hundreds works of fiction published in the twentieth century.  Set in a small Southern mill town in the 1930s, gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated.  At the novel's centre is the deaf-mute John Singer, who is left alone after his friend and roommate, Antonopoulos, is sent away to an asylum.  Singer moves into a boarding house and begins taking his meals at the local diner, and in this new setting he becomes the confidant of several social outcasts and misfits.  Drawn to Singer's kind eyes and attentive demeanour are: o Mick Kelly, a spirited young teenager with dreams greater that her economic means. o Jake Blunt, an itinerant social reformer with a penchant for drink and violence. o Biff Brannon, the childless proprietor of the local café. o Dr. Copeland, a proud black intellectual whose unwavering ideals have lef him alienated from those who love him. TOPICS 

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Profound sense of moral isolation, Compassionate glimpses into its character's inner lives. Deft portrayal of racial tensions in the South.

PRAISES 

Richard Wright praised McCullers for her ability “to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness.”

2. CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE I, CIVIL RIGHTS PERIOD BEYOND: PLURALITY AND REFEFINITION OF BLACKNESS. CIVIL RIGHTS PERIOD (MID-50s THROUGH THE 60s)          

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1955: Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycott. 1957: Christian Leadership Conference. Public School Integration (Little Rock) Federal Civil Rights Commission. 1960: Sit-in movement. Civil Rights Act is signed by Eisenhower. 1960-1963: 20.000 arrested in non-violent demonstrations. 1963:King leads Birmigham demonstrations. March on Washington: 200.000 join in. 1964: Nobel Prize awarded to King. o Civil Rights Bill is passed in Congress. o Freedom Summer. 1965: Council on Equal Opportunity. o 5-day March to Montgomery. o Voting Rights Bill is passed. 1968: King's assassination.

BLACK NATIONALIST ISLAM.   

1960: Elijah Muhammad calls for a separate state. 1964: Malcolm X founds Organization for Afro-American Unity. 1965: Malcolm X's assassination.

BLACK POWER (MID-60s TO MID-70s)  Slogan: Black is beautiful” o 1966: Storkey Carmichael introduces concept  Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is created. o 1967: Black Arts Movement is founded.

BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: Larry Neal. 

1968: Black Fire, co-edited with Baraka

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o Purpose of Black arts: “radical reordering of the Western cultural aesthetic” through a purging of the external European and white American cultural influence from black artist expression. o Development of “Black Aesthetics”

Amiri Baraka 

Greenwich Village: music critic.

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1961: Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. o Cuba Libre. 1964: The Dutchman: Obie Award 1965: Black Arts Repertory School. IN THE MEANTIME... o Vietnam War (1965-1973) leads to mass demonstrations. o 1968: John F. Kennedy's assassination. o 1969: First Black Studies Program.

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AND THE 1970's...     

70s: More race riots. The Black Aesthetic is published by Addison Gayle. 1974: Nixon resigns after Watergate scandal. 1976: Roots by Alex Haley wins Pulitzer Price. Beginning of positive discrimination practices....