Edward Albee: Albee is supposed to be one of the greatest absurdist playwrights after the Second World War in American literature. By the early 1960s, Albee was widely considered to the successor of Williams and Miller. Albee was the first and perhaps the only one of his theatrical generation to move from YAM (Young American Playwright) to FAM (Famous American Playwright). Albee came up with the series of successful works like The Zoo Story; a play written in Absurdist style; The American Dream; a play that attacks on the false values which have destroyed the real values in American society ; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The most famous book having the theme of emptiness, and so on.
Most of Albee’s dramas lack specific setting. Audiences never know the situation and the place where things are happening in play. This is the important feature of absurdist drama. Most of the characters presented by Albee in his works are restless and uncomfortable in their own self. The characters in Albee’s plays seem to suffer from loneliness because they cannot or will not make any connection with each other. Through such an image of the characters, it can be assumed that Albee’s view about human condition is that it is always overpowered by separateness and loneliness, which according to him may be the result of a collapse of values on the western world in general and in the United States in particular. Love is also presented in his plays but not in the way of romantic situation but in the way of lost, decay, fall and failure. Albee’s plays are full of violence both physical violence like in The Zoo Story or verbal like in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is taken as a metaphor to the 1960s American society. The character in the drama like George and Martha are husband and wife; whose life is very much frustrated. They only argue all the time. The violence could not let them to continue their partnership. They seem to be tired of arguing. This shows the common whole American life style.

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 More...

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. Read More...

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. Read More...

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. Read More...

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 More...

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 More...

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 More...

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. Read More...

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. Read More...

John O'Hara: During the post war period, there were too many sexually free novels which became highly successful. Among such writers, the great master in the post war period was John O’Hara. He stands between the novelists of urban environment and the novelist of manners.He sets most of his novels and short stories in a medium-sized Pennsylvania town he named Gibbsville. Read More...