Some Brief Historical Background Notes for

American Short Fiction

Through the 19th and 20th centuries (the 1800s and 1900s):

• A shift from rural to urban

• A population explosion

• The invention of the automobile -- along with the railroads, the capability for transit and mobility

• 19th century Realism and Naturalism are still an influence -- yet there is still some influence from Romanticism as well -- e.g., The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), a juvenile fantasy

World War One (1914-18):

• The great dividing line between the previous century (the 1800s) and "contemporary" America (the 1900s)

• Catastrophe

• Appalling waste

• The failure of political leaders

• No solutions to the world's problems

• The emergence of the "Lost Generation":

  • Devoid of faith

  • Alienated from a botched civilization

  • Expatriates to Europe

• The failure of Prohibition (1919, 1933):

  • It brought, instead, excess and the "Roaring '20s"

• Women's Suffrage (1919-1920) led into Women's Rights (1960s and '70s)

After World War One:

• An increase in the literature of:

  • Tragedy

  • Stark realism

  • Social protest

• An increase in experimental styles:

  • Hemingway -- compression, concision, omission ("Minimalism")

  • Faulkner -- almost the opposite of Hemingway (!?)

• An increase in other forms of art, such as:

  • Architecture

  • Motion pictures

  • Music

• A rebirth in the writing of American Blacks -- esp. the Harlem Renaissance (and the Chicago Renaissance?)

The Stock Market Crash (1929) and The Great Depression (the 1930s):

• An abrupt end of permanent prosperity

• A weakened confidence in government

• An increase of works of social protest and political criticism

World War Two (1939-1945) and After:

• Both prosperity and turmoil

• Writers returned to earlier traditions of Realism and Naturalism

• Also a return to experimental styles

• Regionalism continued to focus on small-town and rural settings, but there was an increased focus on grotesqueness and menacing violence -- e.g., Flannery O'Connor

• The appearance of the "Anti-Hero," a character / protagonist who might be:

  • A victim -- e.g., Tennessee Williams' Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire (?)

  • A rebel

  • A failure -- e.g., Arthur Miller's salesman in Death of a Salesman (?)

• The (re-)emergence of:

  • Black writers

  • Asian-American writers

  • Native-American writers

• An increase in poetry -- esp. "Confessional" (personal) poetry

• Advances in technology -- esp. Television

Source(s):

• Still to be cited -- likely suspects include A Handbook to Literature and The Story and Its Writer and The Norton Anthology of American Literature (volume 2)

Created on 29 June 2012 by Scott R. Stankey