Norman
Mailer: the most important
figure among the American writer, an
extremely influenced personality in
the post world war II American literature
.He began his career with the novel
The Naked and the Dead
–a realistic violent novel about
II World War. This novel was the first
novel to be great critical and popular
success with the theme of violence,
competition and assertion. In this novel,
he changes his narration styles from
first person to third person and third
person to first person. So he bridges
the distance between author and considered
much more radical than the naturalist
Dos Passos.It is even believed that
he tried to end naturalism not only
because he was radical but also because
he introduced various techniques in
this novel like, straight narration,
play let interlude, biographical sketches
etc.In the beginning, Mailer was more
naturalistic writer (using third person
narration), but later he becomes more
personal and subjective (with the shift
to first person narration).There are
several works of Mailer like The
Deer Park that describes
the postwar period, Why
we are at Vietnam? Which
is an allegory about the war and expresses
that Mailer was strongly against the
Vietnam War and The Armies
Of the Night which was
Mailer’s non fictional novel that
blends History with Fiction.
The Prisoner of Sex was Mailers’
last novel, where he has mixed the style
of Passos, Steinbeck
and Farrell along with
a little bit of Hemingway’s
craftsmanship.
He
is a Jewish American writer whose books
frequently explore the unconscious impulses
that drive human behaviors. His service
in US army during World War II provided
background material for his naturalistic
novel The Naked and the
Dead. Sex and violence
often play major roles and his works
frequently express bitterness towards
society and strong liberal philosophy.His
Deer Park
is considered by many to be a novel
of disappointment. Mailer another novel
An American Dream
and Why are we in Vietnam?
explores the place of
violence in modern American life. During
1960s Mailer developed a clear journalistic
style with the intention of presenting
actual events with all the drama and
complexity found in fiction. His book
Armies of the Night
was the culmination (Peak) of these
efforts. The Military remains Mailer’s
favorite metaphor standing for organized
national violence and collective repression
e.g. The Armies of the Night.In
some of his works he shows distrust
of the dominant technological culture
and its achievement. Just after the
war as a rebellious young man, intellectual
and independent Marxist Mailer came
on the scene as a writer of un-constant
genius and more consistently of unfulfilled
promise. His initial literary ambition
was to become a major American novelist,
a young Hemingway. His popular work
The Naked and the Dead
is the study of power at two levels.
(1) the irrational brutality of organized
destruction
(2) the sexual ferocity of the masculine
contest
Besides, Mailer is largely known and
valued for his public performances,
his lectures, manifestos speeches and
his journalistic report on the state
of nation and its culture.
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.
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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. Read
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