Bernard
Malamud: Malamud is an
American novelist. He is also a short
story writer. His books focus on Jewish
experiences in America. Like Bellow
Malamud started his career after Second
World War so their experience about
war is quite similar. Moreover they
both attempt to establish the cultural
identity for Jewish group. For these
reasons, Jewishness is the main feature
found in the works of Malamud as well
as Bellow. Bernard Malamud being a post
war writer includes the theme of alienation,
but he uses schlemiel character to indicate
this alienation. In this respect, he
is different from other Jewish writers
because he shows the success of schlemiel
character and yet, he emphasizes up
on the Christian values. Malamud believes
that Jewish people should not hide their
identity. That is why he is very different
Jewish writer because he shows the success
of schlemiel characters and yet, he
emphasizes up on the Christian values.
Though his basic attitude to life is
Christian, he has not forgotten his
identity as Jew. Sex denied and the
moral of denying the sex is the basis
of Malamud’s stories. He usually
uses epiphany and the language of poignancy
(regret and sadness). Due to this poignancy,
his fictions depict pessimism-he is
reluctant to have happy ending in his
works. Also, he sees Jewish people degenerating
morally- this may even be the cause
of his pessimism. However all the heroes
of Malamud dream to get their dream
girls, who are physically appealing
and sexually pure as well. Finally another
quality of Jewishness that we find in
Malamud’s novels is ambivalence.
When he has a hero looking for pleasure-dream
girl-he has this thirst on the one hand
while on the other that is not achievable.
This leads to ambivalence in Malamud’s
fictions. Malamud’s fictions are:
The Natural, The Assistant,
A New Life, The Fixer, The Magic Barrel,
Idiot’s First.
Beat
Poets :In the later half of
the 1950s a group of poets like
Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerovac,
Gregory Corso etc formed a
group of young rebels called Beat poet
and thus, young rebels developed the
Beat Generation. The Beat Generation
is a group of writers centered in San
Francisco and New York City in the later
half of the 1950s. The poet of this
generation called themselves beat because
they felt themselves to be very much
beaten. Read
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The
Black Art Movement :This
is a new movement which came to be institutionalized
in the sixties and seventies. It was
a radical separatist ethnicism proposing
to disengage itself not only from the
larger world of American literature
but also from the western (white) tradition.
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Black
Drama:
After the end of Second World War the
Negro writer did not paid so much attention
to fiction as much they motivated to
poetry and Drama. Drama became the easiest
form to reflect the pain and suffering.
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Broadway
Theaters: Broadway theaters
are highly commercialized and established
theatres, especially situated on Manhattam.
There theatres are especially situated
in Manhattam. There theatres are musical
as well as they were powerful sources
of entertainment on 1920s and 1930s.
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Off
Broadway: Off Broadway came
on 1940s as a reaction against costly
and commercialized Broadway theatres.
This theater has stage on center and
audience could watch the performance
from all corners. During the 1940s,
there was the heyday of this theatre;
it was highly popular during that time.
But till 1960s there remained no fundamental
differences between Broadway and off
Broadway, it became more commercialized
as Broadway. Read
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Confessional
Poetry: The second generation
poets born from 1920 to 1935 were under
the influence of New critical mode,
but they were less burdened by the legacies
of the great modernists. So some poets
of this generation stuck to the New
critical mode, but some poets developed
a new style in poetry called confessional
mode. Read
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Harlem
Renaissance:
Harlem Renaissance is a cultural moment
of Afro- American people during 1920s.
It was concentrated on New York City’s
Harlem so it is called Harlem. It is
also called as New Negro Renaissance,
New Negro movement. It affected different
fields like art, literature, politics
etc. Read
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Arthur
Miller: Miller belongs to the
second half of the twentieth century.
Miller was leftist and being leftist
he starts his dramatic career with the
propaganda plays. In his propaganda
plays he explicitly overthrows capitalism
and advocates for the establishment
of socialism. Miller is influenced by
Marxism. His propaganda plays are not
published until the publication of
Death of a Salesman in
1949. In his later plays after propaganda
plays he implicitly advocate Marxism.
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Eugene
O’ Neill: Eugene O’
Neill, an American dramatist, who is
internationally reputed in the field
of drama, also got the noble prize in
1936. He was influenced by Henric
Ibsen, August Strindberg and
Maurice Maeterlinck.
He is remembered for realist, naturalist
and expressionist drama. Moreover the
credit goes to Eugene O’Neill
for his realist and naturalistic play.
Before O’Neill in American theater,
there were melodrama which were sentimental
and having the sense of excitement.
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Tennesse
Williams:
If
Eugene O’ Neill, Susan Gospel,
Thornton Wilder Clifford Odets dominated
the first half of the twentieth century.
Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, Lawrance
Hensbery, Sam Shepard, David Moment
dominated the second half of the twentieth
century, but Tennessee Williams is very
much important between this two ages
.
Tennesse
Williams was brought up in the South,
we can clearly see element of the southern
literary tradition in his work. Read
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