Before speaking about American literature, it should be mentioned that the literature of every country greatly reflects its development in all spheres of life. In today’s literature, it is possible to observe the artistic, historical, social, and political value of literary work in connection with the social and political conditions of the definite epoch. This formulation means that features of an epoch are reflected in a theme selected by the author, its characters. These features can add to the work a great public and political significance.
The close connection of the present and history gives rise to new genres (for example, the novel-chronicle) and new graphic means: documents are entered into the text, moving to the time of many decades, and another is popular. The desire to help society forces the writers to pass from novels and stories to publicists (Bradbury, 1992).
The literature is the last and maximum expression of an idea of people shown in a word. The organic sequence in development – here that makes the character of the literature, and here the difference between literature and writing. If the literary work carries on itself a press of essential advantage, – it cannot be the casual phenomenon any more which would not be to some extent result of work preceded it or, at least, would not generate other literary phenomena or, at least, would not have on the direct or indirect influence.
In one of the public performances, a well-known American writer Sol Bello has declared: “To be the intellectual in the United States – means to be immured in privacy where you think, but think under the oppression of that humiliating sensation as it is insignificant a little can to change an idea in life“(McMichael, 2006). Loneliness and inability to go in a waterway of life – the basic theme of the modern American literature declared during the post-war period when the mood of winners was replaced by confusion before the crisis phenomena which began to declare it both in material and in spiritual parties of life.
If the peculiar feature of the writers of school ” hot blood ” – from Jack London up to Ernest Hemingway – “clearness and distinctness of intonation, since 50th in the American prose, poetry and dramatic art ironicalness, anxiety, self-flagellation, shyness, and sensitivity have started to prevail” (Baym, 2002).
The American literature for some last decades – from the end 40 up to 90 – had been made the important opening: one of the vital phenomena and it is necessary to recognize the crisis as the fact and to sustain it before it is possible to overcome it.
In 1940 the novel by E. Hemingway, “For whom the bell calls,” has put the end of a certain stage in the history of American society. In the 30-40ies, the works of Hemingway, with great accuracy, transferred the tastes, smell, and sensation of reality. The readers of Hemingway translated this reality on the language of their own emotions that helped them to perceive the world what it was seen by heroes of the writer. After the war, the universe was lost, the life lost the habitual reliable outlines. Heroes of the great writer died in the struggle against fascism that is why they get tired of living and struggle without clearly realized purpose (Tom Hudson in “The Islands at the ocean”) (Cain, 2004).
The creativity of Hemingway became defining for a new generation of writers who were united in general school “new prose” – to K.MacCalers, J.Wetley, T.Kapote, R.Morris. The subjectivity and ambiguity in the definition of the moral position are the main features of the aesthetic ideals of this school. Wide epic cloths were extremely seldom created now: the art consciousness was split up under the influence of a set of subcultures that drew the serious literature aside mass.
Nevertheless, the moral searches, pilgrimage to the truth, to internal “I” always were in the focus of creativity of writers of the post-war period – Apdake, N.Mailer, S.Bello, D.Salinger, U.Staron. The big influence on the American literature of the 50-70ies was rendered with the philosophy of existentialism. The problem of alienation of the person has been laid down on the basis of ideology. In 50th in San Francisco, the group of young intelligence which has named itself “the broken generation” was formed. They have apprehended close to heart such phenomena as post-war depression, “cold war,” threat of a nuclear accident. They fixed a condition of estrangement of the human person from modern societies and is, naturally, poured out in the form of the protest. Representatives of this youth movement let know that their contemporaries-Americans live on ruins of a civilization. Revolt against establishment became for them the original form of interpersonal dialogue, and it made related their ideology with French existentialism writers (McMichael, 2005).
In the American literature of last decades, Charles Bukovski (1920-1994) takes a special place, belonging to the writers from the category “enfant terrible.” The writer uses thus a non-normative lexicon.
The special place in the literary process of the USA is taken with the Negro literature. Its brightest representative James Baldwin (1924-1987), has called Black writers to depart from stereotypes in the image of the Blacks and to show in all sincere riches and discrepancy of the person of the black American. Baldwin’s position was also divided by other Black writers, and all of the movement has got the name of “a new wave.” Writers brought the focus to the moral aspect of the Black person instead of that has been generated by racist prejudices (Skipp, 1992).
So, it is obvious that literature and national experience are interconnected. They can not exist without each other. As it was mentioned before, literature reflects the experience of the nation, and at the same time, from literature, people learn the experience of the past, which can help them to avoid the same mistakes in the future.
As we know, American literature has developed over several centuries, and it is worth saying that English and French literature have influenced greatly.
Works cited
- Baym Nina, The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Shorter Version, W. W. Norton & Company; 6th edition (2002)
- Bradbury Malcolm, Ruland Richard, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature, Penguin (Non-Classics) (1992)
- Cain William E., American Literature, Volume I (Penguin Academics Series), Longman (2004)
- McMichael George, Leonard James , Anthology of American Literature, Volume I (Anthology of American Literature) , Prentice Hall; 9th edition (2006)
- McMichael George, Leonard James, Concise Anthology of American Literature, Prentice Hall; 6th edition (2005)
- Skipp Francis E., American Literature (EZ-101 Study Keys), Barron’s Educational Series (1992)