THE POST-MODERN AGE
Post Modern Age is a more significant period in the history of English Literature that lasted from 1961 to date. It was the age of wars and bombs which makes world unrest conditions and materialistic spin and decadence in the society started. So literature in this era changed whatsoever had been written in previous ages. Literary persons of the Modern and Post-Modern age started writing the issues of human beings and about wars and their penalties and effects on humanity. Cultural perspectives have been introduced through literature via making films and also by using visual arts. Themes in the writings used regarding political issues and new linguistic features are introduced in the literature. This style of new literature emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Postmodernists often challenge authorities, which has been seen as a symptom of the fact that this style of literature first emerged in the context of political tendencies in the 1960s (Wikipedia). Many literary terms and forms introduced such as Minimalism, Maximalism, Irony, Playfulness, Black Humor, Intertextuality, Metafiction, and Magic Realism had also introduced in the literature.
Genres of the Post Modern Age:
The genres in the age are poetry, drama, and prose in which the well-known genre of the phase was poetry.
Novel in the Post-Modern Age:
The most noticeable name in this era is given as follows;
Samuel Beckett was one of the greatest writers in the Post-Modern age which is why his high-quality work, fiction, and drama made him able as he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. In novels, his famous work was ‘Murphy’ written in 1938, ‘How It Is’ in 1961, ‘Imagination dead Imagine’ in 1966, and ‘The Umambale' in 1960 were most famous in their setting.
Similarly Evelyn Waugh wrote the ‘Brideshead Revised’ in 1945 and ‘Sword of Honour’ in 1961 was famous.
Charles Morgan wrote ‘The River Line’ in 1949 and already has been writing since last age as Graham Greene.
George Orwell wrote ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ in 1936, and ‘Homage to Catalonia’ in 1938 regarding the war themes. Later on, he wrote ‘Animal Farm’ in 1945 and ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ in 1949.
Angus Wilson was also a novelist from the age who wrote on old trends of novels. His famous work was ‘Hemlock and After’ in 1952, ‘Anglo-Saxon Attitude’ in 1956, ‘The Middle Ages of Mrs. Eliot’ in 1958, and ‘No Laughing Matter’ in 1967.
Another group of novelists wrote novels on the standards of Post-Modernism as; John Wain wrote ‘Hurry on Down’ in 1953 was famous work. Similarly, Alan Sillitoe wrote his famous novel ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ in 1958. Colin Wilson wrote ‘Outsider’ in 1956 his best-known work.
Kingsley Amis wrote ‘Lucky Jim’ in 1954 which was about university life and settings, and ‘The Old Devils’ in 1986.
Margaret Drabble was another female writer who wrote ‘A Summer Bird Case’ in 1963, and ‘ The Garrick Year’ in 1964 was famous. Moreover, she wrote, ‘The Radiant Way’, ‘A Natural Curiosity’ and ‘The Gate of Irony’ a trilogy written in the 1980s.
Irish novelist Flann O'Brien finished his novel ‘The Third Policeman’ in 1939. And Edna O'Brien was one of the major female novel writers. She wrote a novel ‘The Country Girls’ trilogy from 1960-1963.
Muriel Spark wrote her famous novel, ‘Memento Mori’ in 1959, and ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ in 1961 was about the old people drama series. Moreover ‘The Driver’s Seat’ and ‘A Far Cry from Kensington’ in 1988 were also famous.
Doris Lessing was also a female writer who wrote political aspects such as ‘The Children of Violence’ in 1952-69, ‘The Golden Notebook’ in 1962, and ‘Canopus in Argos: Archives’ in 1979-1983.
Barbara Pym wrote ‘Excellent Woman’ in 1952, ‘Quartet in Autumn’ in 1977. And David Foster Wallace in his 1990 essay ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’ gave rise to television.
William Golding wrote his best novel ‘Lord of Flies’ in the power settings that symbolize the political issues written in 1954. Moreover, he wrote ‘The Inheritor’ in 1955 and ‘Rites of Passage’, and later on he won Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.
Another Irish novel writer was Murdoch who wrote, ‘Under the Net’ in 1954, ‘The Bell’ in 1958, ‘The Red and Green’ in 1965, ‘The Black Prince’ in 1973, ‘A Word Child’ in 1975, and ‘The Sea’ in 1978 were ass her famous novels about religious, social and Irish rebellions.
Another one was William Trevor who wrote ‘The Old Boys’ in 1964 and ‘Fools of Fortune’ in 1983.
Anthony Burgess was another novelist from this age who wrote, ‘The Malayan Trilogy’ in 1959, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in 1962, and ‘Earthly Powers’ in 1980 all were famous and written in colonial settings and social aspects.
Jean Rhys was another famous novelist who wrote ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ in 1966 a historical background.
Martin Amis was another young novelist who wrote ‘The Rachel Papers’ in 1973 and ‘Dead Bodies’ in 1975 on the theme of sex. Moreover ‘Success’ in 1978 and ‘Money’ in 1984, ‘London Fields’ in 1889 and last on in 1991 was ‘Time’s Arrow’.
Furthermore, novels in the Post-Modern age were written outside England in English for example in Pakistan, India, Japan, China, etc. Writers of this group were; Kazuoa Ishiguro, Timothy Mo, Hanif Kureshi, Anita Brookner, etc.
Major Figures and Works of the Age in the genre of Poetry, Drama, and Prose:
A well-known name in poetry was W.H Auden who was an American who wrote ‘The Age of Anxiety' in 1984 was all about modern society.
Similarly, T.S Eliot was another prominent figure in the Post-Modern Age wrote ‘East Cocker’, ‘The Dry Salvages’, ‘Little Gidding’ were famously written in 1940-42 after Second World War.
Keith Douglas wrote ‘Selected Poems’ in 1943 and ‘Alamein in Zem Zem’ written in 1946.
Sidney Keyes published ‘Collected Poems’ in 1945.
In Drama;
The most noticeable name in the era was August Strindberg, Luigi Pirandello, Bertolt Brecht, and Dadaism.
John Hawkes wrote ‘The Cannibal’ in 1949, and ‘Waiting for Godot’ by Samuel Becket in 1955 from the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. The term ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ was firstly used by Recognitions’ by William Gaddis in 1955, ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov in 1955, and ‘Naked Lunch’ by William Burroughs in 1959, and Mc Sweeney wrote ‘The Believer’ in this time spam. Moreover, the writings of Joseph Heller such as ‘Catch-22’ written in 1961, ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ by John Barth in 1968, and ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut in 1969 were also the part of this era.
There is another form of literature that came into being after the First and Second World Wars i.e. Post-Colonial Literature in which there are many prominent figures such as Joseph Conrad, Charlotte Bronte, Helen Gilbert, Joanne Tompkins, Jean Rhys, and Chinua Achebe were famous for distinguished literary work.
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