Some of the dominant features of postmodern fictions include temporal disorder, the erosion of the sense of time, a foregrounding of words as fragmenting material signs, a pervasive and pointless use of pastiche, loose association of ideas, paranoia and the creation of vicious circles or a loss of destination between separate levels of discourse, which are all symptoms of the language disorders of postmodernist fictions.
The postmodern novel may be summed up as:
• Late modernism.
• Anti-modernism.
• Not avant-garde tendency (may be avant-garde within a literary period).
• Emphasizes plot than character.
• Characters are fragmented/multiple.
• Experimental.
• Misogynist.
• Denigration of female writers.
• Matter of packaging.
• Multinational.
• Narcissistic project.
• Disrupt of modernist convention.
• Structural features.
• Use of authorial persona.
• Introducing one ontological level into another ontological level.
• Self-referential/Self-conscious.
• No real story.
• Postmodern metafictional situation which is different from modernist metafictional situation (emphasizing reading rather than the writing).
Practice of postmodernism in novels and other literary fields has almost become an international phenomenon. As A.S.D. Pillai argues:
Post-modernism is the term used in literary parlance to refer to a corpus of literature that has been written in the mid-fifties, sixties and after, largely in America, and to a lesser extent in Latin America, Europe and Britain. Postmodernism is thus an international literary phenomenon, in the first place, that is including as it does in its canon the pioneers: the Argentanian Jorge Luis Borges and the Russian expatriate, Vladimir Nabokov; the chief French practitioner, Alain Robbe-Grillet; su...
... middle of paper ...
... authorial intrusion in order to comment on his own others’ writings, the involvement of the author as part of fictional character addressing the reader directly from the position of the author, a frank discussion or interrogation of how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and filter reality trying ultimately to prove that no singular truths or meanings exist and deviations and digressions from the accepted unity of the main plot. Thirdly, the use of unconventional and experimental techniques, such as rejection of conventional plot, is refusing to become ‘real life’ or ‘life-like’ in its narrative (rejection of realism), subversion of conventions (fictional/critical). Thus, transforming ‘reality’ into a highly suspect concept is a kind of literary skepticism, flaunting and exaggerating foundations of their instability and displaying reflexivity (18-19).
Macey, David. “Postmodernity.” The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London: Penguin Books, 2001. 307-309. Print.
Modernism can be defined through the literary works of early independent 20th century writers. Modernism is exp...
REFERENCESJean Baudrillard Simulations--1983 Semiotext[e]. America--1988 (English Edition) Verso. Seduction--1990 (English Edition) St. Martin’s Press. The Illusion of the End--1994 (English Edition) Stanford University Press. Simulacra and Simualtion--1994 (English Edition) University of Michigan Press. Jean-Francois Lyotard The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge--1984 (English Edition) University of Minnesota Press. The Postmodern Exaplained--1993 (English Edition) University of Minnesota Press. Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization--1973 Vintage Books. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison--1977 Vintage Books. The History of Sexuality--1980 Vintage Books. Linda Hutcheon A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Thoery Fiction--1988 Routledge. The Politics or Postmodernism--1989 Routledge.
Postmodern literature contains an authoritative point of view as it expresses the “real” and the “unreal”. The authoritative viewpoint hides within the representation of words and the form of the text. Jean Baudrillard speaks of the masking of view in his essay, “Postmodernism and Consumer Society”, when he says, “This, feigning or dissimilating leaves the reality principle inta...
Another important sign of postmodernism in literature is the abandonment of strict time lines, sometimes called discontinuous time. Often an author will construct a sequence of events that have no time relationships to e...
Postmodernism movement started in the 1960’s, carrying on until present. James Morley defined the postmodernism movement as “a rejection of the sovereign autonomous individual with an emphasis upon anarchic collective anonymous experience.” In other words, postmodernism rejects what has been established and makes emphasis on combined revolutionary experiences. Postmodernism can be said it is the "derivate" of modernism; it follows most of the same ideas than modernism but resist the very idea of boundaries. According to our lecture notes “Dominant culture uses perception against others to maintain authority.”
Another important characteristic of postmodern literature is the mixing of styles. Many literary styles such as “[ . . . ] tone, point of view, register, and logical sequence; apparently random unexpected intrusions and [ . . ...
Post-Modernism, the absence of any certainty, discredits the values of modernism, opposing the fixed principles of meaning and value. It is built on countless theories about society, the media and knowledge of the world, but it is also aware that there is no ultimate way of making sense of humanity. Ondaatje embraces aspects of post-modernism, by creating a novel that breaks away from the traditional narrative, thereby giving readers a greater perspective on the novel. One learns that any story is simply a storyteller's construction, and is never unbiased.
In the 1950s, authors tended to follow common themes, these themes were summed up in an art called postmodernism. Postmodernism took place after the Cold War, themes changed drastically, and boundaries were broken down. Postmodern authors defined themselves by “avoiding traditional closure of themes or situations” (Postmodernism). Postmodernism tends to play with the mind, and give a new meaning to things, “Postmodern art often makes it a point of demonstrating in an obvious way the instability of meaning (Clayton)”. What makes postmodernism most unique is its unpredictable nature and “think o...
In conclusion, the use of elements of post modernism add a richness to literature and to the reading experience of the reader. Elements such as irony, magic realism and fragmentation cause people to think and make connections between the literature they are reading and how it relates to their own lives and the lives of the authors and other readers. The short stories studied in Ms. Reynolds 4U English class all contained many effective post modern elements that made students go more in depth with their reading and understanding of noted English literature. Perhaps some people were enlightened and adopted a postmodern view on the world.
Kaes, Anton. "New Historicism: Writing Literary History in the Postmodern Era." Monatshefte 84.2 (1992): 148-58. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30161347.
Lyotard was quoted trying to define postmodern. He is credited as coining this term and making it philosophical jargon, because it first became popular with the publication of The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in 1979. This book contains Lyotard’s thoughts on many subjects, including the computer age, avant-garde art, and creative experimentation, among other things. Jean-François Lyotard is considered (philosophically) a founder of postmodernism. Other founders of postmodernism include Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida.
The Postmodern Era or Post War Era is said to have begun in 1940 (Wang). Postmodernism is defined by Brian McHale as, “A main international current of literature and at after the waning of modernism, both continuous and dis-continuous with modernism” (McHale). Gabriel Garcia Marquez, without any problems, exemplified the postmodern “Literature of Replenishment” (McHale). The characteristic that mainly defined the era is the lack of a good narrative (McHale). Postmodernists also believed that all religions are valid (McHale). This era was full of politics, as World War II had just concluded. Writers who experienced World War II are said to be the people who shaped this era (McHale).
Where does truth lie? Postmodernism is a literary movement of the twentieth century that attempts to show that the answer to this question cannot be completely determined. Characteristics of postmodern works include a mixing of different genres, random time changes, and the use of technology that all aid in presenting a common postmodern theme that truth doesn’t lie in one story, place or person. The novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer encompasses these postmodern characteristics combining together show how the truth cannot always be attained.
Postmodern literary criticism asserts that art, author, and audience can only be approached through a series of mediating contexts. "Novels, poems, and plays are neither timeless nor transcendent" (Jehlen 264). Even questions of canon must be considered within a such contexts. "Literature is not only a question of what we read but of who reads and who writes, and in what social circumstances...The canon itself is an historical event; it belongs to the history of the school" (Guillory 238,44).