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    Postmodernism

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    Lucia Ortega Guardado

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Postmodernism

    Uploaded by

    Lucia Ortega Guardado
    6 views2 pages

    Original Title

    6. Postmodernism

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    6 views2 pages

    Postmodernism

    Uploaded by

    Lucia Ortega Guardado

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    NARRATIVE: POSTMODERNISM

     Problems with the term

    o Lack of coherence
    o No agreement concerning the period
    o Same features as Modernism
    o Others use “Late Modernism”
    o Used in a rather wider sense than is Modernism (it refers to a general human
    condition, or society at large, as much as to art or culture)

     The term “Postmodernism” is used to refer to:

    1. the non-realist and non-traditional literature and art of post-second World War
    period
    2. literature and art which take certain modernist characteristics to an extreme stage
    3. a more general human condition in the “Late Capitalist” world of the post-1950s.

     Modernist characteristics taken to their most extreme forms

    o Rejection of representation in favour of self-reference, especially of a “playful” and


    non-serious sort
    o The willing, even relieved, rejection of artistic “aura”(sense of “holiness”) and of a
    view of the work of art as organic whole
    o The substitution of confrontation and teasing of the reader for collaboration with
    him or her (in other words, in Postmodernism writers prefer to tease the reader;
    confrontation and teasing prevail)
    o The rejection of “character” and “plot” as meaningful or artistically defensible
    concepts or convention
    o The rejection of meaning itself along with the belief that it is worth trying to
    understand the world (or that there is a world to understand)

    1
     Differences with Modernism

    o That this world is one of increasing fragmentation, of the dominance of


    commercial pressures, and of human powerlessness in the face of a blind
    technology is not a point of dispute with Modernism.
    BUT it is typical of Postmodernism to react in a far more accepting manner. It has
    a more welcoming, celebratory attitude towards the modern world.
    o The world has changed since the early years of the twentieth century. In the
    developed countries the advances of communications and electronics have
    revolutionized human society.
    BUT many postmodernists are fascinated with rather than repelled by
    technology, do not reject “the popular” or the commercial as beneath them.

     Some postmodern writers and works:

    John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)


    Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber (1979)
    Donald Barthelme, Paradise (1986)
    William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)
    Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)

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