American and British Contemporary literature
The history of American literature
stretches across more than 400 years.
Definition of contemporary writing.
Contemporary
literature is literature that covers the period from the 19th century to the
present day. There are many writers who participate in this literature, and for
obvious reasons it is the most extensive existing. The birth of contemporary
literature with the industrial and French revolutions is understood; but it
must be clarified that the characteristics of contemporary literature are
better understood when the world wars arrive, where free speech breaks out and
the concepts of free press and freedom of expression are established.
Origin: The origin of contemporary
literature is not exact and its arrival with the 19th century can be
understood, it is possible that more than with the industrial revolution it
emerged with the French revolution and its theories of freedom, which
endemically invaded the planet and although American independence influenced a
lot, it continued under the English regime and culture that was extremely
oppressive and conservative
In the theater
art influences literature for its various genres:
·
comedies
·
musicals
·
Dramas
·
Intrigue
Realism: Realism or naturalism is a
remarkable aspect of contemporary literature.
Comic: This is a new branch of contemporary literature, its emergence began with
fantasy, children's diffusion and current themes, although its origin seems
subsequent to contemporary literature, it is in this period that it fully
emerged.
Manga: Manga is another variant of the comic, it already belongs to contemporary
literature, it is a variation of the American comic.
Dadaism: Dadaism is one of the literary lines of contemporary literature, here are
aspects not seen before or that were not important, "the absurd",
"the color", etc.
Avant-garde: Avant-garde is reflected in the literature of
the first half of the 20th century, where everything that surrounded this
period was clearly reflected, encompassed many writers and many places, but its
duration was relatively short.
Novel: The novel is the most logical and basic form of expression in contemporary
literature, since it expresses the author's idea and can include any genre or
idiom for writing; in general the novel is free but there is also the novel and
its variants:
·
Historical
novel
·
Mystery
novel
·
Police
novel
·
Love
novel
·
Horror
novel
·
Children's
novel etc
Photography: Photographs are an integration to literature, it
was only used a little earlier, since before the 20th century at the end of the
19th, where they began to be integrated into texts, replacing some lithographs.
Poetry: Contemporary poetry covers all western countries,
and involves equally current themes, where the metric system is used in verses
according to everyday life and new themes such as technology and social
processes of this time.
Prose: It is the means of writing
par excellence to express itself, it forms the main basis of texts of almost
any species, clearly excepting those found in verse.
Story: This is a
simple form of expression, which although it can be expressed for adults, focuses
on children or even adolescents. Stories and fables can include a moral and are
easy to read.
Characteristics of the period.
The Contemporary Period (1945 to present)
The United States, which emerged from World War II confident and economically strong, entered the Cold War in the late 1940s. This conflict with the Soviet Union shaped global politics for more than four decades, and the proxy wars and threat of nuclear annihilation that came to define it were just some of the influences shaping American literature during the second half of the 20th century. The 1950s and ’60s brought significant cultural shifts within the United States driven by the civil rights movement and the women’s movement. Prior to the last decades of the 20th century, American literature was largely the story of dead white men who had created Art and of living white men doing the same. By the turn of the 21st century, American literature had become a much more complex and inclusive story grounded on a wide-ranging body of past writings produced in the United States by people of different backgrounds and open to more Americans in the present day.
Literature written by African Americans during the contemporary period was shaped in many ways by Richard Wright, whose autobiography Black Boy was published in 1945. He left the United States for France after World War II, repulsed by the injustice and discrimination he faced as a black man in America; other black writers working from the 1950s through the 1970s also wrestled with the desires to escape an unjust society and to change it.
Literary pieces produced.
GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: La hojarasca, Vivir para contarla, Cien años de soledad.
Contemporary literature encompasses "western" literary production (produced in Europe and America) during the Contemporary Age, that is, from the time of the revolutions (both American and French). It is a difficult concept to apply to literature given the intrinsic overlapping of most works with their historical predecessors, but in this case it is a concept defined more by values of originality and aesthetic rupture than by purely chronological issues.
ERNESTO SÁBATO: El túnel, Sobre héroes y tumbas
ALIENATION: The presentation of the aliened humanity or the consumption society can be manifested sometimes with a play less tone, others with a tragic tone, however, always integrated into the culture of masses.
CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
PABLO NERUDA:
Residence on earth, I confess that I have lived, General Song.
The functionality of the fiction: The property of the literature is properly fictitious. That is, the literature is a separate land, where the real does not fit.
JOSE SARAMAGO (1922-2010): Land of sin, Manual of painting and calligraphy, Elevation of the ground.
FRANZ KAFKA: Metamorphosis Like modern art, contemporary literature - also called modern - is thus known not only for having been written especially from the 19th century, but for drastically breaking with the former.
ECLECTICISM: That is, taking different theories or tends heat is most convenient without defining themselves by any of them, seems to be the characteristic of contemporary literature.
Famous writers from this period and their pieces of writing. (5 American writers at least, and their pieces of work listed).
1.
John Irving, World According to Garp (1978)
John Irving is a famous writer, novelist and screenwriter born on 2nd March 1942 in Exeter, New Hampshire. Irving was member of the Exeter wrestling program first as an athlete and then as a coach. According to Irving it made him disciplined and determined. His wrestling interest is also prominent in many of his works. Irving was ‘An Outstanding American’ (1992) in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh for a year after which he moved to Austria where he enrolled in the University of Vienna. He travelled across Europe and taking in experiences that were later uncovered in his novels. He returned to America and attended the University of New Hampshire becoming a graduate in 1965. Irving studied in the University of Iowa’s Writers’ workshop for some time in the late sixties and received a MFA from the Creative Writers program.
In this coming of age novel, Garp tells the story of T. S. Garp and his mother, Jenny Fields. Jenny is an extreme feminist leader and Garp is her bastard son. Although it is a dark and violent story, there are many elements of comedy that make it a bizarre approach to death, sex, radical feminism and the horrific beauty of human dysfunction
Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song (1979)
Among our major living writers, Norman Mailer is perhaps the most well-known, both in the United States and internationally. No career in our literature has been at once so brilliant, varied, controversial, public, prolific and misunderstood. Few American writers have had their careers on the anvil of public inspection for such a lengthy period; none (excepting Edgar Allan Poe) has been so regularly and simultaneously celebrated and reviled.
Mailer has not only published 39 books (including 11 novels), he has written plays (and staged them), screenplays (and directed and acted in them),poems (in THE NEW YORKER and underground journals), and attempted every sort of narrative form, including some he invented. No record of “new journalism” is complete without mention of his 1960s ESQUIRE columns, essays and political reportage. He has reported on six sets of political conventions (1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, 1992, 1996), participated in scores of symposia, appeared and debated hundreds of times on college campuses, boxed (and fought) in several venues and led a vigorous public life in New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts, his current home. His passions, feuds, imbroglios, litigations and loyalities are numerous, notorious and complex.
The Executioner’s Song
The life of Gary Gilmore, beginning with his release from prison at the age of 35 after serving 12 years for robbery in Indiana. He is allowed to fly to Utah to live with Brenda Nicol, a distant cousin who was close to him and agrees to sponsor him. She tries to help him get back to normal life, which he finds extremely difficult after being in prison for so long. He soon moves to live with his uncle Vern, with whom he works in shoe repair, and Vern's wife. Gilmore next moves on to another job, at an insulation factory, where he performs well at first, but starts to have erratic hours and contentious relationships with co-workers.
Gilmore meets and becomes romantically involved with Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old separated woman with two young children. Despite his efforts to reform himself, Gilmore begins to fight, steal items from stores, and abuse alcohol and drugs. The people who care for him are distressed to see these patterns re-emerge.
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980)
The legacy of John Kennedy Toole is one of comedy twinned with tragedy. Author of A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the few comic novels to win the Pulitzer Prize, Toole never lived to see the success of his novel. Indeed, Toole committed suicide at the age of 31, a full decade before his book was published. Often perceived as a misunderstood writer who killed himself upon the rejection of his novel, Toole’s life was far more full and complex than this simplistic account implies. A brilliant professor, popular with both students and staff, Toole was bright, witty, and outgoing. His suicide was not the result of despair, but instead the terrible consequence of mental illness
Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby (2002)
Palahniuk began writing fiction in his thirties while attending writer’s workshops, hosted by Tom Spanbauer, who inspired Palahniuk’s minimalistic writing style. His initial works were rejected publication mostly because of the amount of disturbing content. However, Palahniuk managed to get one of his short stories published in a compilation in 1995.The story later became an inspiration and evolved into Palahniuk’s most famous novel, Fight Club. While the short story had a difficult time finding a publisher, its conversion into a novel experienced the opposite. Fight club was accepted and published in 1996. For his exceptional writing in Fight club, Palahniuk was presented the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award as well as the Oregon Book Award for Best Novel in 1997.
William Kennedy,
Ironweed (1983)
Like Walker’s The Color Purple, Kennedy’s Ironweed is a novel about survival. Francis Phelan has experienced a tremendous amount of bad luck and has made poor decisions (including accidentally killing his infant son). Ironweed follows Francis and his internal struggle of coming to terms with the difficulties of his past.
