BRITISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

DEFINITION OF COMTEMPORARY WRITING Contemporary literature is a huge group of written works produced from a specific time in history through the current age. This literary era defines a time period, but it also describes a particular style and quality of writing. Some consider this period as an extension of postmodern literature, but most refer to it as a literary era of its own. Most agree that the era of contemporary writing began in the 1940s. A few scholars claim this period started at the end of World War II, and this is where the era's pairing with postmodern literature comes in. The postmodern era began after WWII, in the 1940s, and lasted through the 1960s however the contemporary period extends to the current day. Although there are a few disagreements about the beginning of this literary period, the biggest dispute surrounds what qualifies a written work as literature. The word refers to both poetry and prose, where prose includes works of fiction ...