angry young man
n.
- One of a group of English writers of the 1950s whose works are characterized by vigorous social protest.
- A vigorous critic of economic or social injustice.
|
Results for angry young man
|
On this page:
|
Angry Young Men, a term applied by journalists in the 1950s to the authors and protagonists of some contemporary novels and plays that seemed to sound a note of protest or resentment against the values of the British middle class. The most striking example of the angry young man was Jimmy Porter, the ranting protagonist of John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger (1956). Other works then taken to express ‘angry’ attitudes included Kingsley Amis's campus novel Lucky Jim (1954), and John Braine's novel of social ambition, Room at the Top (1957), but the label is more appropriate to the anti‐heroes of these works than to the authors, whose views were hastily misinterpreted as being socially radical.
For more information on Angry Young Men, visit Britannica.com.
Angry Young Men (or Angries for short) is a journalistic catchphrase applied to a number of British playwrights and novelists from the mid-1950s. The phrase was originally used by British newspapers after the success of the play Look Back in Anger to describe young British writers, though it was derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the Woodcraft Folk, whose "Angry Young Man" was published in 1951.
It has changed meaning over time, and has become a cliché when used more generically, to refer to a young person who strongly criticises political and social institutions.
The playwright John Osborne was the archetypal example, and his signature play Look Back in Anger (1956) attracted attention to a style of drama contrasting strongly with the genteel and understated works of Terence Rattigan that had been in fashion. Osborne's The Entertainer (1957) secured his reputation, becoming a film with Laurence Olivier.
Their political views were seen as radical, sometimes even anarchic, and they described social alienation of different kinds. They also often expressed their critical views on society as a whole, criticising certain behaviours or groups in different ways. On television, their writings were often expressed in plays in anthology drama series such as Armchair Theatre (ITV, 1956-68) and The Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964-70); this leads to a confusion with the kitchen sink drama category of the early 1960s.
As a catchphrase, the term was applied to a large, incoherently defined group, and was rejected by most of the writers to whom
it was applied; see for instance "Answer to a Letter from Joe" by John Wain (Essays on Literature and Ideas, 1963). Some
commentators, following publisher
Friendships, rivalries, and acknowledgments of common literary aims within each of these three groups could be intense (the relationship between Amis and Larkin is considered one of the great literary friendships of the 20th century). But the writers in each group tended to view the other groups with bewilderment and incomprehension. Observers and critics could find no common thread among them all. They were contemporaries by age. They were not of the upper-class establishment, nor were they protegés of existing literary circles. It was essentially a male "movement". Shelagh Delaney, author of A Taste of Honey (1958), was described as an "angry young woman" (see Arthur Marwick (1998) The Sixties).
The perception of them as "angry" outsiders was the one point of coherence. It all had something to do with English "provincialism" asserting itself, in a world where James Joyce (an Irishman) and Dylan Thomas (a Welshman) had recently taken the literary high ground. Feelings of frustration and exclusion from the centre and The Establishment were taken up, as common sense surrogates for the Freud and Sartre of the highbrows. In a negative description, they tended to avoid radical experimentalism in their literary style; they were not modernists by technique. That much fitted in with the overlapping Movement poets, identified as such a year or two before, also a journalistic label.
The term has also been used in reference to three British musicians of the late 1970s and early 1980s whose music carried the vitriol of punk rock, but not its musical style: Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Some good "angry young man" pages on the web:
Phrase www.phrases.org.uk |
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "angry young man" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
![]() | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Literary Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Copyright © Chris Baldick 2001, 2004. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more | |
![]() | Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more | |
![]() | Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Angry young men". Read more |
Mentioned In: