Postmodernism, Twenty-First Century Culture, and American Fiction

Postmodernism, Twenty-First Century Culture, and American Fiction PDF Author: Matt Graham
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104009113X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
Postmodernism’s ‘end’ is a complex and contentious topic. Yet, one overarching consensus emerges: the postmodern has been surpassed. This book poses a thought experiment challenging this position – what if postmodernism persists within the twenty-first century? Rather than designate a new epoch or coherent movement, this book interrogates the fragmented, contradictory, and counterintuitive endurance of postmodern aesthetics within post-Cold War America. An alternative use of postmodern aesthetics becomes possible when they are decoupled from their twentieth-century historical location. Collectively, these repetitions posit a postmodern continuum, contrasting the widely called-for succession of postmodernism via this decoupling. When postmodern aesthetics are no longer unconsciously repeated within their cultural moment, this emergent shift within a period ‘after’ postmodernism presents an alternative historical positioning and use. After their cultural vanguard, postmodern aesthetics become a confrontation of the chaotic realism of an inescapable post-Cold War capitalism, tapping into this cultural zeitgeist through literature.

Succeeding Postmodernism

Succeeding Postmodernism PDF Author: Mary K. Holland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441159347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
While critics collect around the question of what comes "after postmodernism," this book asks something different about recent American fiction: what if we are seeing not the end of postmodernism but its belated success? Succeeding Postmodernism examines how novels by DeLillo, Wallace, Danielewski, Foer and others conceptualize threats to individuals and communities posed by a poststructural culture of mediation and simulation, and possible ways of resisting the disaffected solipsism bred by that culture. Ultimately it finds that twenty-first century American fiction sets aside the postmodern problem of how language does or does not mean in order to raise the reassuringly retro question of what it can and does mean: it finds that novels today offer language as solution to the problem of language. Thus it suggests a new way of reading "antihumanist" late postmodern fiction, and a framework for understanding postmodern and twenty-first century fiction as participating in a long and newly enlivened tradition of humanism and realism in literature.

Postmodernism, Twenty-First Century Culture, and American Fiction

Postmodernism, Twenty-First Century Culture, and American Fiction PDF Author: Matt Graham
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104009113X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
Postmodernism’s ‘end’ is a complex and contentious topic. Yet, one overarching consensus emerges: the postmodern has been surpassed. This book poses a thought experiment challenging this position – what if postmodernism persists within the twenty-first century? Rather than designate a new epoch or coherent movement, this book interrogates the fragmented, contradictory, and counterintuitive endurance of postmodern aesthetics within post-Cold War America. An alternative use of postmodern aesthetics becomes possible when they are decoupled from their twentieth-century historical location. Collectively, these repetitions posit a postmodern continuum, contrasting the widely called-for succession of postmodernism via this decoupling. When postmodern aesthetics are no longer unconsciously repeated within their cultural moment, this emergent shift within a period ‘after’ postmodernism presents an alternative historical positioning and use. After their cultural vanguard, postmodern aesthetics become a confrontation of the chaotic realism of an inescapable post-Cold War capitalism, tapping into this cultural zeitgeist through literature.

Postmodernism, Twenty-first Century Culture, and American Fiction

Postmodernism, Twenty-first Century Culture, and American Fiction PDF Author: Matt Graham
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781032556031
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
"Postmodernism's 'end' is a complex and contentious topic. Yet, one overarching consensus emerges: the postmodern has been surpassed. This book poses a thought experiment challenging this position - what if postmodernism persists within the twenty-first century? Rather than designate a new epoch or coherent movement, this book interrogates the fragmented, contradictory, and counterintuitive endurance of postmodern aesthetics within post-Cold War America. By decoupling postmodern aesthetics from their twentieth century historical location, an alternative use of postmodern aesthetics becomes possible. Collectively, these repetitions posit a postmodern continuum, contrasting the widely called for succession of postmodernism via this decoupling. When postmodern aesthetics are no longer unconsciously repeated within their cultural moment, this emergent shift within a period 'after' postmodernism presents an alternative historical positioning and use. After their cultural vanguard, postmodern aesthetics become a confrontation of the chaotic realism of an inescapable post-Cold War capitalism, tapping into this cultural zeitgeist through literature"--

Late Postmodernism

Late Postmodernism PDF Author: J. Green
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1403980403
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book

Book Description
Does the novel have a future? Questions of this kind, which are as old as the novel itself, acquired a fresh urgency at the end of the twentieth-century with the rise of new media and the relegation of literature to the margins of American culture. As a result, anxieties about readership, cultural authority and literary value have come to preoccupy a second generation of postmodern novelists. Through close analysis of several major novels of the past decade, including works by Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, Kathryn Davis, Jonathan Franzen and Richard Powers, Late Postmodernism examines the forces shaping contemporary literature and the remarkable strategies American writers have adopted to make sense of their place in culture.

Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century

Defining Literary Postmodernism for the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Matthias Stephan
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030156931
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book

Book Description
This book presents a definition of literary postmodernism, using detective and science fictions as a frame. Through an exploration of both prior theoretical approaches, and indicators through characteristics of postmodernist fiction, this book identifies a structural framework to both understand and apply the lessons of postmodernism for the next generation. Within a growing consensus that the postmodern era has passed, this book examines the different conceptions of postmodernism and posits a meaningful definition, one which can provide the foundation for future literary expression. This theory is then applied to genre fiction, particularly detective fiction and science fiction, demonstrating that postmodernism is found in the structure, rather than questions posed about literary expression. Finally, Matthias Stephan considers post-postmodern movements, and how they can be expressed given this definition of literary postmodernism, moving forward to the twenty-first century.

Postmodern/Postwar and After

Postmodern/Postwar and After PDF Author: Jason Gladstone
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 160938427X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Get Book

Book Description
Within the past ten years, the field of contemporary American literary studies has changed significantly. Following the turn of the twenty-first century and mounting doubts about the continued explanatory power of the category of “postmodernism,” new organizations have emerged, book series have been launched, journals have been created, and new methodologies, periodizations, and thematics have redefined the field. Postmodern/Postwar—and After aims to be a field-defining book—a sourcebook for the new and emerging critical terrain—that explores the postmodern/postwar period and what comes after. The first section of essays returns to the category of the “post-modern” and argues for the usefulness of key concepts and themes from postmodernism to the study of contemporary literature, or reevaluates postmodernism in light of recent developments in the field and historical and economic changes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These essays take the contemporary abandonments of postmodernism as an occasion to assess the current states of postmodernity. After that, the essays move to address the critical shift away from postmodernism as a description of the present, and toward a new sense of postmodernism as just one category among many that scholars can use to describe the recent past. The final section looks forward and explores the question of what comes after the postwar/postmodern. Taken together, these essays from leading and emerging scholars on the state of twenty-first-century literary studies provide a number of frameworks for approaching contemporary literature as influenced by, yet distinct from, postmodernism. The result is an indispensable guide that seeks to represent and understand the major overhauling of postwar American literary studies that is currently underway.

Twenty-First Century Latin American Narrative and Postmodern Feminism

Twenty-First Century Latin American Narrative and Postmodern Feminism PDF Author: Gina Ponce de Leon
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443862835
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Get Book

Book Description
The authors of Twenty-First Century Latin American Narrative and Postmodern Feminism argue that, while the more traditional feminists of the 20th century did not recognize in their theoretical and literary work the diversity of women’s experiences, current Latin American post-feminist and post-modern writers are proposing a transgressive new social order, resulting in a more significant cultural resistance to the society they represent. The authors included in this volume show that the narrative of the writers analyzed here is not limited to recognizing issues focused on gender or even sexuality, but also explores the female aspiration of a dignified life and overcoming the dominant structures in their social, political and cultural dimension. The complex female situation of this millennium has become the primary quandary while searching for new forms to represent women in literature. In Twenty-First Century Latin American Narrative and Postmodern Feminism, the authors confront this dilemma in a sharp, sophisticated and harmonious way, offering a critical text that will be of interest for both specialists and general readers interested in Latin American literature and culture of the recent years.

Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture

Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture PDF Author: Yaw Agawu-Kakraba
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 0708322727
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
"Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture" is a compelling study that combines elements of cultural studies and literary studies in order to present an integrated cultural representation of the emergence of a postmodern social constitution of contemporary Spain. Marking a sweeping reposition from earlier works about postmodernity and postmodernism in Spain, "Postmodernity in Spanish Fiction and Culture" makes a strong connection between postmodernity as social and economic conditions that are the result of unique features of a Spain of the 20th and 21st century, and postmodernism as life-style experiences that manifest new cultural and artistic practices of the 1980s and beyond. The study examines postmodernity by relating it to those exclusive social and cultural experiences that are patently Spanish (the movida, desencanto, immigration, globalization, and terrorism) and concludes that by virtue of Spain's unique socio-cultural, economic, and political history, not only does the country emerge as one of the most postmodern of all European nations but also that the conditions that define the country's evolution from the mid 1980s to the present constitute a distinctively authentic postmodernity.

Succeeding Postmodernism

Succeeding Postmodernism PDF Author: Mary K. Holland
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441159347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book

Book Description
While critics collect around the question of what comes "after postmodernism," this book asks something different about recent American fiction: what if we are seeing not the end of postmodernism but its belated success? Succeeding Postmodernism examines how novels by DeLillo, Wallace, Danielewski, Foer and others conceptualize threats to individuals and communities posed by a poststructural culture of mediation and simulation, and possible ways of resisting the disaffected solipsism bred by that culture. Ultimately it finds that twenty-first century American fiction sets aside the postmodern problem of how language does or does not mean in order to raise the reassuringly retro question of what it can and does mean: it finds that novels today offer language as solution to the problem of language. Thus it suggests a new way of reading "antihumanist" late postmodern fiction, and a framework for understanding postmodern and twenty-first century fiction as participating in a long and newly enlivened tradition of humanism and realism in literature.

Rewriting

Rewriting PDF Author: Christian Moraru
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791451083
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book

Book Description
Examines the tendency of post-World War II writers to rewrite earlier narratives by Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, and others.