Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature

Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature ASL Literature in English

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 • An effect of, or reaction to, postmodernity -- a historical and cultural period that many believe has succeeded modernity

Postmodernist Literature: Overview • After World War II • A series of reactions against the perceived failure • Extension of modernist literature • 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)

Wagner’s Approach to the Definition of Postmodernism • To give a label to the period after 1968 (which would then encompass all forms of fiction, both innovative and traditional) • To describe the highly experimental literature by Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles in 1960s to Martin Amis and the "Chemical (Scottish) Generation" of the fin-de-siècle

Wagner’s Approach to the Definition of Postmodernism • Postmodernist writers: Experimental authors (especially Durrell, Fowles, Carter, Brooke-Rose, Barnes, Ackroyd, and Martin Amis) • Postmodern writers: authors who have been less innovative

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 • Absurd plays: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett

Modernism Vs Postmodernism: 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: Poems • 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.

Postmodernist Literature: Characterization • Not necessarily the same as the literature of postmodernity • The movement ("postmodernism") focuses on eclecticism (the choosing of the "best" of previous movements), based on the postwar value system • Any literature of the period postmodernity might be mislabelled "postmodern"

Common Themes & Techniques • Irony, playfulness, black humor • Postmodern fiction: characterized by the ironic quote marks, • Postmodern novelists labeled black humorists: John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman • Common to treat serious subjects in a playful and humorous way

Common Themes & Techniques • Stories of Donald Barthelme: A good example of postmodern irony and black humor • “The School”: the ironic death of plants, animals, and people connected to the children in one class • The inexplicable repetition of death is treated only as a joke and the narrator remains emotionally distant throughout

Common Themes & Techniques • Thomas Pynchon: playfulness, often including silly wordplay, within a serious context • “The Crying of Lot 49”: Characters named Mike Fallopian and Stanley Koteks and a radio station called KCUF, while having a serious subject and a complex structure

Common Themes & Techniques • Pastiche • To combine, or "paste" together, multiple elements. • An homage to or a parody of past styles • A representation of the chaotic, pluralistic, or information-drenched aspects of postmodern society • A combination of multiple genres to create a unique narrative or to comment on situations in postmodernity • William S. Burroughs: science fiction, detective fiction, westerns • Margaret Atwood: science fiction and fairy tales

Common Themes & Techniques • Broader pastiche of the postmodern novel: Metafiction and temporal distortion • The Public Burning by Robert Coover (1977): Mixture of historically inaccurate accounts of Richard Nixon interacting with historical figures and fictional characters such as Uncle Sam and Betty Crocker. • Pastiche in ompositional technique: the cut-up technique by Burroughs. • The Unfortunates by B. S. Johnson (1969): released in a box with no binding for readers to assemble how ever they chose.

Common Themes & Techniques • Metafiction • Writing about writing or "foregrounding the apparatus" • Making the artificiality of art or the fictionality of fiction apparent to the reader • Generally disregards the necessity for “willful suspension of disbelief” • To undermine the authority of the author, for unexpected narrative shifts • To advance a story in a unique way, for emotional distance • To comment on the act of storytelling

Common Themes & Techniques • If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (1979): a reader attempting to read a novel of the same name • Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969): the first chapter - about the process of writing the novel

Common Themes & Techniques • Historiographic metafiction • Fictionalize actual historical events or figures • The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (about Simón Bolívar) • Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow (featuring such historical figures as Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and Sigmund Freud)

Common Themes & Techniques • Temporal distortion • Central features: Fragmentation and non-linear narratives • Temporal distortion for the sake of irony • Example: Historiographic metafiction • Distortions in time in Kurt Vonnegut's non-linear novels: Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five coming "unstuck in time“

Common Themes & Techniques • Anachronisms: Abraham Lincoln using a telephone In his flight to Canada (Ishmael Reed) • Time may also overlap, repeat, or bifurcate into multiple possibilities. • "The Babysitter" from Pricksongs & Descants by Robert Coover: multiple possible events occurring simultaneously -- in one section the babysitter is murdered while in another section nothing happens and so on

Common Themes & Techniques • Technoculture and hyperreality • Fredric Jameson: “society has moved past the industrial age and into the information age”. • Jean Baudrillard: postmodernity was defined by a shift into hyperreality in which simulations have replaced the real. • People are inundated with information • Technology as a central focus in many lives

Common Themes & Techniques • Our understanding of the real is mediated by simulations of the real • Characteristic irony and pastiche • White Noise by Don DeLillo: characters who are bombarded with a “white noise” of television, product brand names, and clichés • The cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson

Common Themes & Techniques • Paranoia • The belief that there is an ordering system behind the chaos of the world • Postmodernist: no ordering system exists, so a search for order is fruitless and absurd. • Often coincides with the theme of technoculture and hyperreality. • Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: the character Dwayne Hoover becomes violent when he is convinced that everyone else in the world is a robot and he is the only human

Common Themes & Techniques • Maximalism • a term used in literature, art, multimedia and graphical design, and music • to explain a movement by encompassing all factors under a multi-purpose umbrella term like expressionism To describe the extensive way of writing post-modern novels • Digression, reference, and elaboration of detail • Also described as hysterical realism (similar to magical realism) coined by James Wood

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Postmodernism & Postmodernist Literature