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Post-war writing of the 1950s and 1960s

Post-war writing of the 1950s and 1960s. Finding a voice in a post-war world. Nick Baker. The basic questions. How do your chosen texts explore the tensions, crises and preoccupations of the post-war period? (see presentations from October meetings in 2017 and 2018)

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Post-war writing of the 1950s and 1960s

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  1. Post-war writing of the 1950s and 1960s Finding a voice in a post-war world. Nick Baker

  2. The basic questions • How do your chosen texts explore the tensions, crises and preoccupations of the post-war period? (see presentations from October meetings in 2017 and 2018) • How do the writers develop an appropriate form and voice in which to do so? (today’s session)

  3. The importance of voice, form and style in this topic • ‘Genre’ topics such as Gothic Writing are based on genre featuresthatinclude style, voice and form • ‘Period’ topics such as Post-WarWritingneedequally to focus on the issues of form, style and voicethatreflect the time. These are inseparablefrom the ideas in the texts

  4. A new world order • American leadership • British decline, American prosperity • Moral uncertainty • New threats–nuclearwar, cold war • ‘To writepoetryafter Auschwitz isbarbaric’ - Theodore Adorno, Cultural Criticism and Society, 1949)

  5. Britain & America in the 1950s ‘I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.’ -Osborne: Look Back in Anger Post-war decline; pessimism, cyncism Post-war prosperity; crisis of female identity; idealism

  6. Engaging in the issues • Is the post-war ‘new world order’ under threat in today’s world? Is America’s leadership in doubt? • How do today’s conversations about gender and power compare with those in these texts? How much progress has there been? • How do the more personal issues (purpose, identity, gender, morality, uncertainty) still resonate today?

  7. New voice, new identity • Voice of disillusionment, disbelief: Larkin, Amis • Voice of anger, rage: Osborne, Sexton, Plath, Pinter • Voice of idealism: Kerouac, Snyder

  8. Form and style – new or old? Modernism or Naturalism/Realism? How do the writersfind a form and style to advancetheirideas? • Kerouac • Pinter • Amis • Plath • Larkin • Osborne

  9. Finding a voice: sense or sensibility in a post-war world? • Larkin, Gunn: latinate language; ‘metaphysical’. • Larkin: desire to be ‘the less deceived’; ruthlessly rational dismantling of faith, love and hope • The poet as shaman (Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Gary Snyder) • Plath: shamanic invocation of images extreme enough to reflect experience • Hughes: Anglo-Saxon language and sonorities; pagan (deities still inhabit his poetry) • Kerouac: literary jazz

  10. Spot the text: post-war voices • ‘Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do’ • ‘There was nowhere to go but everywhere’ • ‘This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do’ • ‘My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked forgiveness’ • ‘Do you recognise an external force?’

  11. ‘You’re dead. You can’t live, you can’t think, you can’t love. You’re dead. You’re a plague gone bad. There’s no juice in you. You’re nothing but an odour.’ • ‘Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can’t, and you don’t know her very well’

  12. Finding an identity: attitudes to a post-war capitalist world • Larkin, Amis: disbelief, scepticism, rational analysis • Pinter: crisis of meaning, suspicion of institutions • Kerouac, Snyder: questioning of American capitalist dream, return to fundamental American values; exploration of alternative American cultural roots: • Black American culture: Jazz, civil rights movement (Kerouac: developing a literary form of jazz, using bebop rhythms with words) • American Indian culture (Snyder: focus on ecology and shamanic ritual)

  13. Analysing voice • What voice(s) are given expression in your texts/in the six poems? How do these voices, and the texts themselves, engage with • Culture • Gender • Attitude to authority, money, power, tradition • Lexis • How would you describe the tone of the voices in your texts? • What attitudes or states of being are conveyed through the voice?

  14. Voice and identity • How do these voices engage with issues of identity in a post-war world?

  15. Artistic context • How do your texts converse with other artistic productions - of their time or of the past?

  16. Morality • How does your text exhibit moral awareness or engagement through the voice(s) it creates?

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