What name should we apply to the 20th century as a literary age?

Question

I have just been tempted to respond to a question about "modern American literature." Most of the responses seemed to assume that the phrase included all of the 20th century, but isn't it stretching things a bit to refer to works written before World War I as "modern" anymore.

Some of my colleagues used to distinguished between "modern literature" and "contemporary literature," using the first phrase roughly for pre-WWII and the latter for post-WWII. Both now seem to be somewhat anachronistic uses of "modern" and "contemporary." Earlier periods in British and American literature are sometimes called, for example, the Renaissance, the Metaphysical Age, Neo-Classical Age, the Age of Romanticism, the Victorian Period, the Age of Realism. What term(s), like these, might be most appropriate for the past century?

Answer 1

I'd call it The Age of Angst or the Age of Grit, because so many stories deal with fear, broken families, and war.

Answer 2

Thats a really good question! Sadly, I can only come up with silly names for it so I hope you don't take it personally.

The Brown Period (Heh)
Reality Age
Age of Decay
Surrealism
The Age of the ****** up Sonofabitc/h (Have you read Chuck Palhniuk sp? You'll understand then)
Post-reality
Post-brains
Post-intelligence
Primitive

And I'm done because they keep getting sillier and sillier. I hope you do find a good answer though!

Answer 3

I would go with " The century of the shrinking planet" or something along those lines.

Answer 4

The age of enlightenment.