Postwar American
Literature
Postwar American Literature
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I. The 1940s Generation
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Elizabeth Bishop: " Sestina", "One Art"
Postwar American Literature
Postmodernism:
 a term used to designate a multitude of
trends in the arts, philosophy, religion,
technology, and many other areas that come
after and deviate from the many 20th
century movements that constituted
modernism.
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Postwar American Literature
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II. The Confessional School
Confessional Poetry:
A form of Poetry in which the poet reveals very personal,
intimate, sometimes shocking information about himself or
herself.
Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and John
Berryman wrote poetry in the confessional vein.
Robert Lowell: Life Studies
Sylvia Plath: "Daddy", "Lady Lazarus"
Postwar American Literature
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III. The Beat Generation:
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A period featuring a group of American poets and
novelists of the 1950s and 1960s — including Jack
Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William
S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti — who
rejected established social and literary values.
Postwar American Literature
IV. The New York School
 ( a group of collagists, Dadaists, and
surrealists, in the 1960s)
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V. The Black Mountain Poets
 (Black Mountain College)
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Postwar American Literature
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VI. Postwar Novel
Important writers:
Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Jewish writer, Nobel
prize winner of 1976, whose main works are
Dangling Man, The Adventures of Augie March,
Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, Seize The Day,
Mr. Sammler's Planet, Humboldt's Gift, More Die
of Heartbreak, etc.
Postwar American Literature
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J.D. Salinger (1919- ): The Catcher in the Rye
John Updike (1932- ), with his Rabbit pentalogy
Joyce Carol Oates (1938- ): We Were the
Mulvaneys, Blonde, The Fall, etc.
John Cheever (1912-1982 ): The Eenormous
Radio and Other Stories
Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964): A Good Man Is
Hard To Find, Everything That Rises Must
Converge, etc.
Postwar American Literature
Novelist of the Absurd:
 Joseph Heller(1923-1999): Catch-22
 Catch-22 is like no other novel It is one of
the funniest books ever written, a key-stone
work in American literature, and even added
a new term to the dictionary.
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