Movement and Genre Studies, tacitly seeks to redefine the history of British and American literature by concentration on important periods/ movements. It includes two related books, Redrawing the Boundaries edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, and Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing edited by Daniel Hoffman. The chapters/topics are apparently puzzling but the reward after reading them is great because they are designed to give us an overview of literary movements and genres according to the latest developments in critical approaches to literature.

    The first book discusses 'literary studies in English' why they are in a period of rapid and disorienting change. As we know that the second half of twentieth century witnessed a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary approaches for teaching literature, research and other modes of practices, the reading of appreciating and criticizing of literature was to be redefined or the boundary was to be redrawn. The strength of deconstruction, cultural materialism, gender studies, new historicism etc appears very great in the academic, critical and above all cultural level of production and consumption of a practice like literature. So, you need to understand these approaches first, and then only what field has been redrawn. This redrawing the map of literary studies has posed many problems to the earlier traditions, and faces many challenges: it rejects the earlier traditions in which ethnic, women and other marginal groups were marginalized; it also rejects the earlier tendencies to value one genre, subject, style against other. Similarly, it seeks to demolish the basic foundation and canonicity which is one way or other prioritized and respected one or some view, dogma, philosophy, people etc, with full of hierarchies and biases. So to rescue the literature that were embargoed, excluded, marginalized and even neglected and to understand the basic foundation on which earlier canonicity, classic work, name and fame, greatness and prizes and reputations etc. of the writers and literary transience of such foundation, redrawing the boundaries excels this expertise. So, the literary "work" has been construed as "text" simply to shift the focus from the "form of signified" to the "process of signification". The first book, therefore, displays the recent literary practices through an array of scholars on their respective fields and proficiency. Reading these scholars grants some insights on the one hand about the approaches, and on the other, more importantly about what effects appear or what changes appear on reading of literature.

    The second book, Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing edited by Daniel Hoffman surveys one of the most important era in American literature i.e. from Second World War to the late 1970s. In this book, some recent brilliant critics observe and discuss the prominent writers from different perspectives. Intellectual Background to the period from Second World War to the late 1970s appears in the first chapter which has been written by Alan Trachtenberg simply to elucidate the socio- political, cultural, religious and other settings of that time. The Second Chapter, Literary Criticism" presents the literary criticism prevalent at the time through the eyes of A. Walton Litz. We see how American literary criticism of the time moves from "consensus to diversity"(i.e. from New Criticism to bewildering variety of Criticism). The next chapter, “Realism, Naturalism, and the Novelistic of Manner" provides you not only simple definition of the topical terms but also the major writers with their major writings. You can get the ideas of such great realists and naturalists as John Don Passos, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and J.D. Salinger.

    One of the most important developments of the time is southern fiction, which is dealt under the same subject title “Southern Fiction" by Lewis P. Simpson. Here you can get the information of the major southern writers including William Faulkner, R.P. Warren. Eudora Welty, Mary McCarthy, Flannery O'Conner etc. The fifth chapter under the title," Jewish Writers" surveys themes, issues and styles etc of the most celebrated writers like Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud and I.B. Singer who belong to Judaism. The next chapter, "Experimental Fiction" talks about the major experimental fictional writings to answer the questions: how did postwar fiction search the ways to deal with violence, brevity and rigidity of the life? How did these fictions bring the themes of combativeness, fragmentation, escapism coolness and meaninglessness with pastiche, parody, surrealism etc.? Similarly much debated "Black Literature" shows us the black writing after Harlem Renaissance that flourished with reference to Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Loraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka inter alia. We also see the popular black theme as equality, liberty, nostalgia, sex, violence, tolerance, revolt, anguish, frustration, and many more.

    It includes two related books, Redrawing the Boundaries edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, and Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing edited by Daniel Hoffman.

                                  Group 1: Redrawing the Boundaries

                                           Group 2: Harvard Guide to Contemporary American Writing

Recommended     Readings

1) Greenblatt,S.and Giles Gunn(ed.), Redrawing the Boundaries, New York:MLA.1992.

2) Hoffman, Daniel (ed.), Harvard Guide to Contemporary Writing. Mass:Harvard     UP,1979.