Post World War II Literature: Trends and Techniques

Ajay Arya

doi:10.63363/aijfr.2026.v07i02.5125

Post World War II Literature: Trends and Techniques

Author(s)	Mr. Ajay Arya
Country	India
Abstract	The 20th century witnessed two nerve-wracking wars. The 1940s, with the nuclear weapon, gave a new direction for the world, enforcing a subtle tension among the developing nations. The aftermath of the war can be heard in literary expressions of the decade. The effect brought social, political and economic change in broad perspectives, giving writers new subjects, who pen down the repercussions of the war in varied forms of literature. In December 1939, shortly after the war broke out, an article published in the Times Literary Supplement called poets back into their duty: “it is for the poets to sound the trumpet call….The monstrous threat to belief and freedom which we are fighting should urge new psalmists to fresh songs of deliverance” (Greenblatt 694). The message was clear: a call for literary response against the havoc. Cecil Day-Lewis, Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, T.S. Eliot, Henry Reed, etc., strikingly wrote in response to the war. The outcomes of the battle were not much detriment for common men, as it brought significant changes both in necessities and opportunities. The shift in themes from modernism to postmodernism was one of the notable changes in literature. The writers showed a broader effect in their subject matters as well as literary forms. Disillusionment, anxiety, meaninglessness of life, existentialism, trauma, and loss of faith were the key highlights of their works through the techniques like narrative point of view, magic realism, intertextuality, hyper reality, pastiche, metafiction, subtle shifting of time zone etc. Several other forms, such as theatre of the absurd, angry young man theatre, dystopian fiction, movement poetry, poetry of witness etc., can be seen in literature. The present paper is a comprehensive study of the trends and techniques of post-World War II narratives.
Keywords	Post WW II Literature, Trends & Technique, Disillusionment, Meaninglessness, AYM, Absurdity, Existentialism, Movement Poetry
Field	Sociology > Linguistic / Literature
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 2, March-April 2026
Published On	2026-04-27
DOI	https://doi.org/10.63363/aijfr.2026.v07i02.5125

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Post World War II Literature: Trends and Techniques

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