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Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature
Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature
Postmodernist Literature
English 11
What is “Postmodernism”?
Postmodernism: Definition
Coined in 1949
To describe a dissatisfaction with
modern architecture, founding the
postmodern architecture
Any of several movements (as in art,
architecture, or literature) reacting
against the philosophy and
practices of modern movements
Postmodernist Literature:
Overview
After World War II
A series of reactions against the
perceived failure
Reaction against modernism
Postmodernist Literature:
Overview
Important Works:
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)
Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth
(1968)
Slaughterhouse Five by
Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
Gravity's Rainbow by
Thomas Pynchon (1973)
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
First, what is “modern”? Depends on Discipline.
The break away from 19th-century values
is often classified as modernism, and
carries the connotations of transgression
and rebellion. However, the last twenty
years has seen a change in this attitude
towards focusing upon a series of
unresolvable philosophical and social
debates, such as race, gender and class.
Rather than challenging and destroying
cultural definitions, as does modernism,
post-modernism resists the very idea of
boundaries. It regards distinctions as
undesirable and even impossible, so that
an almost Utopian world, free from all
constraints, becomes possible.
Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
A break from 19th century realism
A story was told from an objective or
omniscient point of view
Character development:
Both literature explore subjectivism
Turning from external reality to examine
inner states of consciousness
Drawing on modernist examples in the
stream of consciousness styles of
Virginia Woolf and James Joyce
Modernism Vs
Postmodernism: Poems (Not
limited to poems)
The Waste Land by T S Eliot
Fragmentary
Employing pastiche like much
postmodern literature
Speaker in The Waste Land:
"these fragments I have shored
against my ruins"
Modernist literature: fragmentation
and extreme subjectivity as an
existential crisis, or Freudian
internal conflict
Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
A problem that must be solved,
and the artist often cited as the
one to solve it
Postmodernists: this chaos is
insurmountable; the artist is
impotent, and the only recourse
against "ruin" is to play within the
chaos.
Playfulness becomes central and
the actual achievement of order
and meaning becomes unlikely
Modernism Vs
Postmodernism
Explore fragmentariness in narrative-
and character-construction
Characterized by allusive difficulty,
paradox, and indifference or outright
hostility to the democratic ethos
More and more in jeopardy since the
rise of fascism and dictatorial
communism.
Modern: Postmodern:
Linear progress in “Historicity”,
history historicization, socio-
Boundaries, social cultural locatedness
class, race and of moments in history
gender Critical study of class,
Formality, emphasis race, and gender;
on authoritarian uses other
perspectives perspectives
Scientific rationality, Intertextuality, self-
unified theory of reflexivity, montage,
progress pastiche
Essentialism, seeking Signs, image,
“real” essences reproductive social
order
Prescription
Local accounts
Normative
Description
“Post-modernism has many interpretations
and no single definition is adequate.
Different disciplines have participated in
the post-modernist movement in varying
ways … in architecture, traditional limits
have become indistinguishable, so that
what is commonly on the outside of a
building is placed within, and vice
versa.
In literature, writers adopt a self-conscious
intertextuality sometimes verging on
pastiche, which denies the formal
propriety of authorship and genre. In
commercial terms post-modernism may
be seen as part of the growth of
consumer capitalism into multinational
and technological identity.”
…postmodernity (involves) the end of
an overarching belief in scientific
rationality and a unitary theory of
progress, the replacement of
empiricist theories of
representation and truth, and
increased emphasis on the
importance of the unconscious, on
free-floating signs and images, and a
plurality of viewpoints … a shift from a
`productive' to a ‘reproductive’ social
order, in which simulations and
models -- and more generally, signs --
increasingly constitute the world, so
that any distinction between the
appearance and the ‘real’ is lost.
“Another feature of postmodernism
seen by some theorists is that the
boundaries between `high' and
`low' culture tend to be broken
down. According to many theorists,
postmodernist cultural movements,
which often overlap with new
political tendencies and social
movements in contemporary society,
are particularly associated with the
increasing importance of new class
fractions.”
Common Themes &
Techniques
Irony, playfulness, black humor,
hyperreality, temporal distortion,
metacognition/metafiction, paranoia
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