Postmodernism

1
Postmodernism Postmodernist Literature

• ASL Literature in English

2
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

3
Postmodernist Literature Overview

• After World War II
• A series of reactions against the perceived
  failure
• Extension of modernist literature
• Reaction against modernism

4
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)

5
Wagners 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

6
Wagners 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

7
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
  

8
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

9
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
  

10
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.

11
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"

12
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

13
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

14
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

15
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

16
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.

17
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

18
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

19
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)

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
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

24
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

25
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

26
Time to go

• Thank you!