Tekst- og litteraturhistorie i de engelsksprogede lande

1. Tekst- og litteraturhistorie i de engelsksprogede lande Session Seven: Postmodernism Revisited

2. Postmodernism • The death of the novel • Reality takes a holiday or the illusion of literary representation is destroyed? • Realism is unmasked as a literary and rhetorical convention • Metafiction: ”a literary work representing nothing other than itself” (1959) • The balloon = ”The Balloon” • The bloody chamber = ”The Bloody Chamber”?

3. Postmodernism • Reality takes a holiday? • Thomas Pynchon and the laws of physics • Margaret Atwood and John Barth: Authenticity and the codes and conventions of society and literature

4. Writing, Convention, Authenticity • Wordsworth • Hardy • Eliot, Woolf

5. Thomas Pynchon, ”Entropy” • Entropy = a measure for useless energy • Thermodynamics: • Heat, power, movement • The transformation of energy into different forms • The movement of energy and how energy instills movement

6. The First Law of Thermodynamics • The total amount of energy in a closed system is constant: When we use energy, it doesn’t disappear. It merely changes shape. • Fossil fuel – electricity – a cup of coffee – heat • Gasoline – speed – heat

7. The Second Law of Thermodynamics • The entropy of a closed system increases irreversibly over time. • The available energy becomes more and more difficult to access until it becomes completely inaccessible and totally useless • Energy goes from localised to dispersed

8. Heat Death • Energy (heat) is distributed evenly all over the system • The entities of the system become identical (uniform sameness, no difference) • The end of the universe

9. Heat Death • The end of culture? • The end of language, meaning, and value? • The end of communication?

10. Thomas Pynchon, ”Entropy” • How is the story about entropy? • Is the story an example of entropy? • Is reading imaged in terms of heat death?

11. John Barth, ”Lost in the Funhouse” (1968) • ”Not act; be.” (7) • The human subject: self and roles • The literary text: representation and conventions

12. Margaret Atwood, ”Happy Endings” (1983) • Beginnings, endings, and middles

13. David Lodge, ”Hotel des Boobs” • Literary self-consciousness and the destruction of the illusion of literary representation

14. David Lodge, ”Hotel des Boobs” • The level of the told: story (Harry and Brenda) • The level of the telling: plot (third person narrator, unintrusive, limited point of view) • The level of the telling: plot (the author and the author’s wife) / the level of the told (the author and the author’s wife) • The level of the telling: plot (the third person narrator, unintrusive, limited point of view)

15. David Lodge, ”Hotel des Boobs” • The disruption of the frame tale convention • The frame tale convention: • The framed tale • The frame tale • Wuthering Heights: Emily Brontë{Lockwood (Nelly Dean – Lockwood) Addressee} The reader • Frankenstein: Mary Shelley [Mrs Saville {Walton (The Monster – Frankenstein) Frankenstein} Addressee] The reader • David Lodge [the author (Harry and Brenda) addressee]