THE CONTEMPORARY

PERIOD (1939-PRESENT
Contemporary period
• Vast group of written works produced from a specific time in
history through the current age
Why is it called Contemporary Period?
•Refers to as literature written after World War II through
the current day.
• • Works of this period reflect a society’s social and/or
political viewpoints, shown through realistic character,
connections to current events and socioeconomic messages.
Literature in Contemporary World
• Begins at the end of World War II, and in order to
understand this literature and how it developed, we need to
look at where it came from.
• With writers like Hemingway and T.S. Eliot, the Modernist
period (taking place between the 1920s and 40s) explored the
ways that truth is not straightforward, rational or clearly
defined, but rather how it is completely influenced by human
perception.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
He served in the military and reflected this characteristics
onto his characters. Common themes in his works include
heroic fatalism and disillusionment after warfare, and
common motifs include excessive drinking and ideal
masculinity.
• The Sun Also Rises follows a group of young American and
British expatriates as they wander through Europe in the
mid-1920s. They are all members of the cynical and
disillusioned Lost Generation, who came of age during
World War I (1914-18).
T.S. ELIOT
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a poet, essayist, publisher,
playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th
century’s major poets, he is a central figure in English-language
Modernist poetry.
• The Waste Land can be viewed as a poem about brokenness and
loss, and Eliot’s numerous allusions to the First World War
suggest that the war played a significant part in bringing about
this social, psychological, and emotional collapse.
Their writing brought us deeper into the workings of the human
mind as a means to get at reality.
• Modernists believed that the characters’ thoughts mattered more
than the plot, and the way things are said. Rhythm and imagery
– may communicate more about the character than what they are
doing.
It also brings a shift in how we see the world. By the end of
WWII, the modernists had heightened our awareness that truth is
merely a product of human perception.
• If truth is so influenced by human perception, then a clear,
objective standard for truth isn’t quite so clear-cut, and reality
is, to some extent,what we make of it.