Indian literature is generally believed to be
the oldest in the world. With vast cultural diversities, there are
around two dozen officially recognized languages in India. Over
thousands of years, huge literature has been produced in various
languages in India. It is to be noted that a large part of Indian
literature revolves around devotion, drama, poetry and songs.
Sanskrit language dominated the early Indian literary scene whereas
languages like Prakrit and Pali too had fair share as they were the
languages of the common people.
It is interesting to note that the Hindu literary traditions have
dominated a large part of Indian culture. These traditions are well
reflected in great works like Vedas and epics such as Ramayana and
Mahabharata. Treatises like Vaastu Shastra (architecture),
Arthashastra (political science) and Kamsutra are true reflection of
the Indian literary excellence.
Early Hindi literature, in dialects like Avadhi and Brai, began
around religious and philosophical poetry in medieval period. Sant
Kabir and Tulsidas were the greatest exponents of the Hindi
literature during this period. With the passage of time, the Khadi
boli (dialect) became more prominent and saw a great upsurge, which
continues to this day.
During the medieval period, Muslim literary traditions dominated a
large part of Indian literature and saw flourishing of Muslim
literature. Muslim rule during the medieval times saw rapid growth
and development of Persian and Urdu literature in India. A huge
variety of literature spanning across history, culture and politics
was written in this period.
With the coming of the British in India, works started to be
written in English language. As more and more Indians became well
versed with the English language, the number of works in English
literature began to grow. During the contemporary times, numerous
Indian authors have made their mark on the world English literature
scene. Some of the most noted Indian born or Indian writers are R.
K. Narayan, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Amitav
Ghosh, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai and Jhumpa Lahiri.
Poetry
Indian poetry, and Indian literature in general, has a long history dating back to Vedic times. They were written in various Indian languages such as Vedic Sanskrit, Classical Sanskrit, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and Urdu. Poetry in foreign languages such as Persian and English
also have a strong influence on Indian poetry. The poetry reflects
diverse spiritual traditions within India. In particular, many Indian
poets have been inspired by mystical experiences.
Hebrew Literature
Hebrew literature, literary works, from ancient to modern, written in the Hebrew language.
Early Literature
The great monuments of the earliest period of Hebrew literature are the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. Parts of the Pseudepigrapha and of the Dead Sea Scrolls
were also produced before the conquest of Judaea by Titus. The
literature of the Jews developed mainly in the Hebrew language, although
there were also works in Greek, Aramaic, and Arabic.
In the 2d
cent. A.D. began the Talmudic period, which lasted well into the 6th
cent. In these centuries the great anonymous encyclopedic work of
religious and civil law, the Talmud, was compiled, edited, and interpreted. The Midrash-a collection of halakah
(found also in the Talmud) and haggadic material-likewise forms part of
the Hebrew literature of that period. In the 4th cent. the Targum to the Pentateuch and to the Prophets was finished. The 6th and 7th cent. saw the development of the Masora in Palestine. In Babylonia meanwhile many valuable additions to Hebrew literature were made by the Gaonim after the 6th cent.
Medieval Literature
Commentaries
on the Talmud and haggadic material continued to be written until the
11th cent., when the Babylonian academies were suppressed and the center
of Jewish literary activity shifted to Spain. France and Germany became
the main centers of Talmudic commentary. In Spain, and to some extent
in Italy, Hebrew literature flourished for centuries. The finest work
was accomplished in the realms of poetry-influenced by Arab and Indian
literature-and philosophy. Philology, exegesis, and codification also
flourished. By the 14th cent. the largely Aramaic mystical treatise, the
Zohar, had appeared-the masterpiece of a flourishing literature of Jewish mysticism (see kabbalah).
Famous scholars and authors of Hebrew literature in the Middle Ages included Aha of Shabcha, Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayumi, Dunash ben Tamim, Dunash ben Labrat, Gershom ben Judah, Al-Fasi, Solomon ben Judah Ibn Gabirol, Rashi, Judah ha-Levi, Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, Immanuel ben Solomon, Isaac Abravanel, and Joseph ben Ephraim Caro.
In the persecutions following the Crusades, when the Jews were driven
from country to country, they clung to their literature-which leaned
increasingly to mysticism and asceticism-and especially to the Hebrew
Bible.
Beginnings of Modern Hebrew Literature
On the threshold of the transition from the old isolated life to a wider one was the poet Moses Hayyim Luzzatto-a contemporary of the Gaon of Vilna, Elijah ben Solomon-but the modern period of Hebrew literature really began with Moses Mendelssohn. While Nachman Krochmal and Shloime Ansky (Solomon Seinwel Rapoport) were contributing to biblical criticism and historical scholarship, writers such as Peretz (Peter) Smolenskin
were devoting themselves to Haskalah, or literature of enlightenment,
intended to shake the Jews of Central Europe from their medieval
attitudes. Other important figures of the period are the scholar Joseph
Halévy, the poet Jehuda (Leon) Gordon, and the novelist Solomon Yakob Abramovich, whose pseudonym was Mendele mocher sforim.
Zionism and Literature in Israel
The rise of Zionism, particularly reflected in the writings of Ahad Ha-am
(Asher Ginzberg), gave Hebrew literature fresh impetus, and Palestine
became again the center of publication in Hebrew. Hebrew was proclaimed
the national language of the Jews even before the establishment (1948)
of the state of Israel. The two great poets of modern Hebrew literature
are Hayyim Nahman Bialik and Saul Tchernihovsky,
who was strongly influenced by ancient Greek literature. The poetry of
Abraham Shlonsky, Lea Goldberg, and Nathan Alterman deals with social
and political themes.
Among the many writers of prose are Joseph
H. Brenner, who described Jewish life in Eastern Europe and pioneer life
in Palestine, and Salman Shneur, who wrote of the simple and uneducated
Jews. The Nobel laureate S. Y. Agnon
portrayed the Eastern European milieu and pioneer life in Palestine;
his works have become classics in modern Hebrew epic literature. Hebrew
writers who are native to Israel seek inspiration in the classical
Hebrew past or in the new life of Israel. The most outstanding writer of
this group is Moshe Shamir, who in his two novels-one depicting a
Hasmonean king and the other dealing with the Arab-Israeli War of
1948-gave new dimensions to Hebrew fiction.
Aron David Gordon
(1856-1922) was one of the greatest social and political essayists of
Hebrew literature; significant Hebrew language literary critics include
David Frishman (1861-1922) and Yosef Klausner (1874-1958). In recent
years the Israeli novelists Amos Oz,
Abraham B. Yehoshua, and Aharon Appelfeld, and the poet Yehuda Amichai
have been widely translated and have achieved international distinction.
Outside Israel, the writing of the Jews is ordinarily in the language
of the countries in which they live or in Yiddish, whose literary use developed rapidly after the middle of the 19th cent.
Arabic Literature
The structure of the Arabic language is well-suited to harmonious
word-patterns, with elaborate rhymes and rhythms. The earliest known literature emerged in
northern Arabia around 500 AD and took the form of poetry which was recited aloud,
memorised and handed down from one generation to another. It began to be written down
towards the end of the seventh century. The most celebrated poems of the pre-Islamic
period were known as the mu'allaqat
("the suspended"), reputedly because they were considered sufficiently
outstanding to be hung on the walls of the ka'ba in Makkah.
The typical poem of this period is the qasidah (ode),
which normally consists of 70-80 pairs of half-lines. Traditionally, they describe the
nomadic life, opening with a lament at an abandoned camp for a lost love. The second part
praises the poet's horse or camel and describes a journey, with the hardships it entails.
The third section contains the main theme of the poem, often extolling the poet's tribe
and villifying its enemies.
The birth of Arabic prose as a literary form is attributed to the
Persian secretarial class who served under the Abbasid caliphs (750-1256) in Baghdad. Ibn
al-Muqaffa' (died 757) was a convert to Islam who translated classical Persian works
into Arabic. He became famous as the author of Kalila and Dimna, a series of
didactic fables in which two jackals offer moral and practical advice.
al-JAHIZ (776-869) developed Arabic prose into a
literary vehicle of precision and elegance. Born in Basrah, he was noted for his wit and
became one of Baghdad's leading intellectuals during the early Abbasid period. The most
famous of his 200 works were:
-
Kitab al-Hayawan ("The Book of Animals"),
an anthology of animal anecdotes.
-
Kitab al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin ("The Book of
Elucidation and Exposition"), ostensibly about rhetoric but also covering history and
science.
-
Kitab al-Bukhala’ ("The Book of
Misers"), amusing but perceptive observations on psychology.
ABU AL-FARAJ al-Isfahani (c 897-967),
from Aleppo, wrote Kitab al-Aghani ("The Book of Songs"), in 24 volumes.
A model of simplicity and clarity in its writing, the book gives a comprehensive picture
of Arab culture and society, including songs and poems which were popular in Baghdad under
the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. A vizir (government minister) of the time is said to
have taken 30 camel-loads of books whenever he travelled - until he received a copy of the
Book of Songs. He then felt able to dispense with all the other books.
al-HAMADHANI (died 1008) is credited with
inventing the genre known as maqamat ("assemblies") - dramatic anecdotes
narrated by a witty but unscrupulous rogue which poke fun at all levels of society.
Elaborately written in rhyming prose, they exploit the unique capabilities of the Arabic
language to the full. Out of 400 original maqamat, 52 survive.
The trend towards linguistic virtuosity led, ultimately,
to a triumph of form over content. al-HARIRI (c 1054-1122) took the maqamah
to new heights (or extremes) in order to demonstrate his prowess with word-play and his
seemingly inexhaustible vocabulary. In one work, he used only those letters of the alphabet which have
no dots or do not join to the following letter in a word. Even so, for more than seven
centuries, al-Hariri's maqamat were regarded as the greatest literary treasure of
Arabic, after the Qur'an. According to some readers, wholesome moral values and subtle
criticisms of the existing social order underlie al-Hariri's decorative language.
Poetry
Arabic poetry is based largely on harmonies of sound and striking turns of
phrasing. Hence most of the poems are brief; and a poet's fame depended upon a few
brilliant couplets rather than on any sustained melody or long-continued flight of noble
thought. One distinguished philosophical poem of some length is the well-known
"Lament of the Vizier Abu Ismael." This we give in full at the conclusion of
this section; but mainly we must illustrate the finest flowering of Arabic verse by
selecting specimens of characteristic brevity. Many of the Arab caliphs inclined to the
gaieties of life rather than to their religious duties, and kept many poets around them.
Indeed some of the caliphs themselves were poets: The Caliph Walid composed music as well
as verse; and was hailed by his immediate companions as a great artist. His neglect of
religion, however, was so reckless as to rouse the resentment of his people, and he lost
his throne and life.
Most noted of all the Arab poets was Mutanabbi (905-965). His fantastic imagery and
extravagant refinements of language were held by his admirers to be the very perfection of
literature. More than forty commentaries were written to explain the subtleties of his
verse. Such, indeed, was the intensity of Mutanabbi's poetic ecstasy that he fancied
himself a prophet and began to preach a new religion, until a term in prison persuaded him
to cling to the accepted form of Mohammedanism. In one well-known passage ridiculed by the
great French critic, Huart, Mutanabbi says of an advancing army that it was so vast
"The warriors marched hidden in their dust, They saw only with their ears."
The commentators explain, perhaps unnecessarily, that this means that the warriors' senses
were confused by all the tumult, so that while they thought they saw, in reality they only
heard the clamor of the marchers around them. In translation, Mutanabbi's verses lose all
value. Deprived of their Arabic melody they seem mere bombast and absurdity. This, in
fact, is the general charge which must be made against the later Arabic poetry. It too
often degenerated into empty sound.
Japan Literature
Japanese literature spans
a period of almost two millennia of writing. Early work was heavily
influenced by Chinese literature, but Japan quickly developed a style and
quality of its own. When Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and
diplomacy in the 19th century, Western Literature had a strong effect on
Japanese writers, and this influence is still seen today.
As with all literature, Japanese literature is best read in the original.
Due to deep linguistic and cultural differences, many Japanese words and
phrases are not easily translated. Although Japanese literature and Japanese
authors are perhaps not as well known in the west as those in the European
and American canons, Japan possesses an ancient and rich literary tradition
that draws upon a millennium and a half of written records.
Japanese Literature -
History
There is debate
regarding the classification of periods in Japanese literature. The
following is a general guide based on important political and cultural
events. Given the immense span of years covered in this article, it is not
comprehensive, but rather highlights prominent works and authors of the
various periods. All names are in the Japanese order of surname first, given
name second.
Japanese Ancient
Literature (pre-8th Century)
With the introduction
of kanji
(漢字, lit. "Chinese characters") from the Asian mainland, writing
became possible, as there was no native writing system.
Consequently, the
only literary language was classical Chinese to begin with; later,
the
characters were adapted to write Japanese, creating what is known as
the man'yōgana, the earliest form of kana, or syllabic writing. Works
created in
the Nara Period include Kojiki (712: a partly mythological, partly
accurate
history of Japan), Nihonshoki (720: a chronicle with a slightly more
solid
foundation in historical records than the Kojiki), and Man'yōshū
(759: a
poetry anthology). The language used in the works of this period
differs
significantly from later periods in both its grammar and phonology.
Even in
this early era, significant dialectal differences within Japanese
are
apparent.
Japanese Classical
Literature (8th Century - 12th Century)
Classical Japanese
literature generally refers to literature produced during the Heian Period,
what some would consider a golden era of art and literature. The Tale of
Genji (early 11th century) by Murasaki Shikibu is considered the pre-eminent
masterpiece of Heian fiction and an early example of a work of fiction in
the form of a novel. Other important works of this period include the Kokin
Wakashu (905, waka anthology) and The Pillow Book (990s), the latter written
by Murasaki Shikibu's contemporary and rival, Sei Shonagon, about the life,
loves, and pastimes of nobles in the Emperor's court. The iroha poem was
also written during the early this period, becoming the standard order for
the Japanese syllabary until 19th century Meiji era reforms.
In this time the imperial court and highest ranked kuge patronized the
poets. There was no professional poets but most of them were courtiers or
ladies-in-waiting. Editing anthologies of poetry was one of national
enterprises. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry in that time
was elegant and sophiscated and expressed their emotions in rhetorical
style.
Japanese Medieval
Literature (13th Century - 16th Century)
A period of civil war
and strife in Japan, this era is represented by The Tale of the Heike
(1371). This story is an epic account of the struggle between the Minamoto
and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century. Other
important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmei's Hōjōki (1212) and
Yoshida Kenko's Tsurezuregusa (1331). Writing Japanese using a mixture of
kanji and kana the way it is done today started with these works in the
medieval period. Literature of this period evinces the influences that
Buddhism and Zen ethics had on the emerging samurai class. Work from this
period is noted for insights into life and death, simple lifestyles, and
redemption of killing.
Other remarkable genres in this period were renga, collective poetry and Noh
theatre. Both were rapidly developed in the middle of the 14th century, that
is, early Muromachi period.
Japanese Early-Modern
Literature (17th Century - mid-19th Century)
Literature during this
time was written during the largely peaceful Tokugawa Period (commonly
referred to as the Edo Period). Due in large part to the rise of the working
and middle classes in the new capital of Edo (modern Tokyo), forms of
popular drama developed which would later evolve into kabuki. The joruri and
kabuki dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon became popular starting at the end of
the 17th century. Matsuo Bashō, best known for Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道, 1702:
a travel diary variously rendered 'Narrow Road to the Far North', 'Narrow
Road to Oku', and so on into English), is considered to be one of the first
and greatest masters of haiku poetry. Hokusai, perhaps Japan's most famous
wood block print artist, illustrated fiction aside from his famous 36 Views
of Mount Fuji.
Many genres of literature made their debut during the Edo Period, helped by
a rising literacy rate that reached well over 90% (according to some
sources), as well as the development of a library(-like) system. Ihara
Saikaku might be said to have given birth to the modern consciousness of the
novel in Japan. Jippensha Ikku (十返舎一九) wrote Tokaido chuhizakurige
(東海道中膝栗毛), a mix of travelogue and comedy. Ueda Akinari initiated the modern
tradition of weird fiction in Japan with his Ugetsu Monogatari, while
Kyokutei Bakin wrote the extremely popular fantasy/historical romance Nanso
Satomi Hakkenden (南総里見八犬伝). Santō Kyōden wrote tales of the gay quarters
until the Kansei edicts banned such works. Genres included horror, crime
stories, morality stories, comedy, and pornography�often accompanied by
colorful woodcut prints. Formats included yomihon, various zōshi, and
chapbooks.
Japanese Meiji and
Taisho Literature (late 19th Century - WW II)
The Meiji era marks
the re-opening of Japan to the West, and a period of rapid
industrialization. The introduction of European literature brought free
verse into the poetic repertoire; it became widely used for longer works
embodying new intellectual themes. Young Japanese prose writers and
dramatists have struggled with a whole galaxy of new ideas and artistic
schools, but novelists were the first to successfully assimilate some of
these concepts. A new colloquial literature developed centering on the "I
novel," with some unusual protagonists as in Natsume Soseki's Wagahai wa
neko de aru (I Am a Cat). Other famous novels written by him include Botchan
and Kokoro (1914). Shiga Naoya, the so called "god of the novel," and Mori
Ogai were instrumental in adopting and adapting Western literary conventions
and techniques. Akutagawa Ryunosuke is known especially for his historical
short stories. Ozaki Koyo, Izumi Kyoka, and Higuchi Ichiyo represent a
strain of writers whose style hearkens back to early-Modern Japanese
literature.
War-time Japan saw the debut of several authors best known for the beauty of
their language and their tales of love and sensuality, notably Tanizaki
Junichiro and Japan's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature,
Kawabata Yasunari, a master of psychological fiction.
Japanese Post-war
literature
World War II, and
Japan's defeat, influenced Japanese literature. Many authors wrote stories
of disaffection, loss of purpose, and the coping with defeat. Dazai Osamu's
novel The Setting Sun tells of a returning soldier from Manchukuo. Mishima
Yukio, well-known for both his nihilistic writing and his controversial
suicide by seppuku, began writing in the post-war period.
Prominent writers of the 1970s and 1980s, were identified with intellectual
and moral issues in their attempts to raise social and political
consciousness. One of them, Oe Kenzaburo wrote his most well-known work, A
Personal Matter in 1964 and became Japan's second winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature.
Inoue Mitsuaki had long been concerned with the atomic bomb and continued in
the 1980s to write on problems of the nuclear age, while Endo Shusaku
depicted the religious dilemma of the Kakure Kirishitan, Roman Catholics in
feudal Japan, as a springboard to address spiritual problems. Inoue Yasushi
also turned to the past in masterful historical novels of Inner Asia and
ancient Japan, in order to portray present human fate.
Avant-garde writers, such as Abe Kobo, who wrote fantastic novels such as
Woman in the Dunes (1960), wanted to express the Japanese experience in
modern terms without using either international styles or traditional
conventions, developed new inner visions. Furui Yoshikichi tellingly related
the lives of alienated urban dwellers coping with the minutiae of daily
life, while the psychodramas within such daily life crises have been
explored by a rising number of important women novelists. The 1988 Naoki
Prize went to Todo Shizuko for Ripening Summer, a story capturing the
complex psychology of modern women. Other award-winning stories at the end
of the decade dealt with current issues of the elderly in hospitals, the
recent past (Pure- Hearted Shopping District in Koenji, Tokyo), and the life
of a Meiji period ukiyo-e artist. In international literature, Ishiguro
Kazuo, a native of Japan, had taken up residence in Britain and won
Britain's prestigious Booker Prize.
Murakami Haruki is one of the most popular and controversial of today's
Japanese authors. His genre-defying, humorous and fantastic works have
sparked fierce debates in Japan over whether they are true "literature" or
simple pop-fiction: Oe Kenzaburo has been one of his harshest critics.
However, Western critics are nearly unanimous in assessing Murakami's works
as having serious literary value. Some of his most well-known works include
Norwegian Wood (1987) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995). Another
best-selling contemporary author is Banana Yoshimoto.
Although modern Japanese writers covered a wide variety of subjects, one
particularly Japanese approach stressed their subjects' inner lives,
widening the earlier novel's preoccupation with the narrator's
consciousness. In Japanese fiction, plot development and action have often
been of secondary interest to emotional issues. In keeping with the general
trend toward reaffirming national characteristics, many old themes reemerged,
and some authors turned consciously to the past. Strikingly, Buddhist
attitudes about the importance of knowing oneself and the poignant
impermanence of things formed an undercurrent to sharp social criticism of
this material age. There was a growing emphasis on women's roles, the
Japanese persona in the modern world, and the malaise of common people lost
in the complexities of urban culture.
Popular fiction, non-fiction, and children's literature all flourished in
urban Japan in the 1980s. Many popular works fell between "pure literature"
and pulp novels, including all sorts of historical serials,
information-packed docudramas, science fiction, mysteries, business stories,
war journals, and animal stories. Non-fiction covered everything from crime
to politics. Although factual journalism predominated, many of these works
were interpretive, reflecting a high degree of individualism. Children's
works remerged in the 1950s, and the newer entrants into this field, many of
them younger women, brought new vitality to it in the 1980s.
Manga (comic books) have penetrated almost every sector of the popular
market. They include virtually any field of human interest, such as a
multivolume high-school history of Japan and, for the adult market, a manga
introduction to economics, and pornography. Manga represented between 20 and
30 percent of annual publications at the end of the 1980s, in sales of some
￥400 billion per year.
The Future of
Japanese Literature
Entering the 21st
century, there is controversy whether the rise in popular forms of
entertainment such as manga and anime has caused a decline in the quality of
literature in Japan. The counter-argument is that manga positively affect
modern literature by encouraging younger people to read more.
Significant Japanese
authors and works
Famous authors and
literary works of significant stature are listed in chronological order
below. For an exhaustive list of authors see List of Japanese authors:
Classical Literature
Sei Shonagon (c.~966 - c.10??): The Pillow Book
Murasaki Shikibu (c.973 - c.1025): The Tale of Genji
Medieval Literature
The Tale of the Heike (1371)
Early-Modern
Literature
Ihara Saikaku (1642 � 1693)
Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694)
Ueda Akinari (1734 - 1809)
Santo Kyoden (1761 - 1816)
Juppensha Ikku (1765 - 1831)
Kyokutei Bakin (1767 - 1858)
Late-Modern Literature
Mori Ogai (1862 - 1922)
Ozaki Koyo (1867 - 1903)
Natsume Soseki (1867 - 1916)
Izumi Kyoka (1873 - 1939)
Shiga Naoya (1883 - 1971)
Tanizaki Junichiro (1886 - 1965)
Akutagawa Ryunosuke (1892 - 1927)
Eiji Yoshikawa (1892-1962)
Kawabata Yasunari (1899 - 1972)
Dazai Osamu (1909 - 1948)
Endo Shusaku (1923 - 1996)
Abe Kobo (1924 - 1993)
Mishima Yukio (1925 - 1970)
Oe Kenzaburo (1935)
Murakami Haruki (1949)
Murakami Ryu (1952)
American Literature
American literature has a relatively short but colorful history. The
first widely read American author was Benjamin Franklin, whose witty
aphorisms and sound advice written in the yearly journal Poor Richard’s Almanack helped shape ideas of what it means to be an American. Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) was the first American to gain an international literary reputation. James Fenimore Cooper’s verbal landscapes in his Leatherstocking Tales
captured the nation’s vast beauty. Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson
broke from poetic tradition and brought a sense of individuality to the
nation’s literature. Mark Twain still captivates readers with his
unique—and uniquely American—humor and insight. The modernists of the
1920s and 1930s produced such talents as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest
Hemingway. Today, writers like Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy
continue to make American literature relevant and exciting.
In the postwar period, the art of the short story again flourished. Among its most respected practitioners was Flannery O'Connor
(b. March 25, 1925 in Georgia – d. August 3, 1964 in Georgia), who
renewed the fascination of such giants as Faulkner and Twain with the
American south, developing a distinctive Southern gothic
esthetic wherein characters acted at one level as people and at another
as symbols. A devout Catholic, O'Connor often imbued her stories, among
them the widely studied "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "Everything That Rises Must Converge", and two novels, Wise Blood (1952); The Violent Bear It Away
(1960), with deeply religious themes, focusing particularly on the
search for truth and religious skepticism against the backdrop of the
nuclear age. Other important practitioners of the form include Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, John Cheever, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff, and the more experimental Donald Barthelme.
Among the most respected of the postwar American poets are John Ashbery, the key figure of the surrealistic New York School of poetry, and his celebrated Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1976); Elizabeth Bishop and her North & South (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1956) and "Geography III" (National Book Award, 1970); Richard Wilbur and his Things of This World, winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for Poetry in 1957; John Berryman and his The Dream Songs, (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1964, National Book Award, 1968); A.R. Ammons, whose Collected Poems 1951-1971 won a National Book Award in 1973 and whose long poem Garbage earned him another in 1993; Theodore Roethke and his The Waking (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1954); James Merrill and his epic poem of communication with the dead, The Changing Light at Sandover (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1977); Louise Glück for her The Wild Iris (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1993); W.S. Merwin for his The Carrier of Ladders (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1971) and The Shadow of Sirius (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2009); Mark Strand for Blizzard of One (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1999); Robert Hass for his Time and Materials, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for Poetry in 2008 and 2007 respectively; and Rita Dove for her Thomas and Beulah (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1987).
