Literary Movement:

Contemporary Literature

1950 to Present

“Life through multiple windows”

Historical Context• 1953 Korean War ends• 1957 Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I begins the “space race” with the U.S.

• 1963 Martin Luther’s “I have a dream” speech• 1963 JFK’s assassination• 1965 U.S. escalates involvement in Vietnam War• 1969 First humans walk on the moon• 1974 Watergate scandal forces President Nixon’s

resignation• 1987 U.S. stock market crashes• 1990-91 Operation Desert Storm• 1990s Internet rises as major form of communication

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 statements—meta-narratives—about 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 Anderson’s metaphor: “Life through multiple windows”

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

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