John Don Passos: Passos was the person to bring social events in real sense as they occurred. He was a member of last generation of American expatriates in Paris in 1920s that included Ernest Hemingway and e.e. cummings. His focus was on social panoramas than towards personal and poetic expressions. So he was a social realist, which was a common feature among his contemporary realities. This method was typical of the fiction of 1930s. His best novels dealt with the subject matter of World War I and II. He is noted for rhetorical techniques that included prose poem, documentary collages and essays as well. In the war, he became detached observer; this means he did not participate in the war but rather observed everything as an outsides.In the later phase Passos tried to become more and more a naturalist. His intention was to expose ills and evils of contemporary American society that forced him to follow the line of crude reality. Therefore in the last phase of his writing careers he was close to naturalism. Passos was not happy with the contemporary American policy where many people were killed on the charge of being communists. Passos wanted to expose that reality. So his later phase or the journalistic phase is more important than the earlier phase of his career. The second phase of Passos is called the phase of disillusionment. Indeed Passos was fed up with American policy of treating public and injustice prevailing there. Some were killed on the charge of being communists and others without any cause the later realized that American policy, government and all the institutions, Agencies and others were not in favor of American people.Though Passos’s first novel deals with the impact of Europe and First World War an America, his later fiction reflects his dissatisfaction about the individual freedom being suppressed. Passos established his reputation with such novels as
Three soldiers (1921), Manhattan Transfer (1925), The Trilogy U.S.A (1936), Mid Century (1961)

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. Before O’Neill in American theater, there were melodrama which were sentimental and having the sense of excitement. 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...