essay on postmodernism in english literature

Postmodern Period in English Literature

The Postmodern Period, which began in the middle of the 20th century, is characterized by a radical shift in literary and cultural paradigms. Its departure from the Modern Period was what made it distinctive, and it did so in response to the enormous societal, technological, and political developments. Postmodernism, which is characterized by its skepticism towards grand narratives and its embracing of intertextuality and fragmentation, reflects the complexity and ambiguities of the Post-World War II age. It was a period of unprecedented cultural change, technical growth, and a growing awareness of the global interconnectedness of societies. The change from the Modern to the Postmodern periods was characterized by an intensive reevaluation of conventional literary forms and the introduction of new storytelling techniques that questioned traditional ideas about reality and identity.

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Cultural and Historical Background

The decades that followed World War II and the start of the Cold War significantly influenced the cultural and historical backdrop of the Postmodern Period. The terrible effects of the war on a worldwide level caused a general feeling of disappointment and existential doubt, which was reflected in the literature of the time. The Civil Rights Movement , which fought against racial injustice and segregation, and feminist movements, which promoted women’s rights and gender equality, occurred at the same time as other key social and political upheavals. These social movements, along with the larger counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, encouraged literary activism and social critique.

Read More: Modern Period in English Literature

Additionally, the rapid growth of technology, especially the introduction of television and subsequently the internet, changed how information was shared and narratives were consumed, impacting storytelling styles. These developments changed how information was transmitted and narratives were consumed. Finally, the philosophical foundations of postmodernism, with intellectuals like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault challenging the nature of language, truth, and knowledge, had a significant influence on the arts and literature, leading to the adoption of intertextuality and metafiction in literary works. In essence, the Postmodern Period’s cultural and historical context was one of complexity, unpredictability, and a persistent reevaluation of social conventions, all of which profoundly influenced the literature of the time.

Literature of the Postmodern Period

The literature of the Postmodern Period is distinguished by a drastic departure from conventional narrative forms often referred to as “metafiction,” . By deliberately bridging the borders between fiction and reality, this approach undermines traditional storytelling. This approach is seen in the works of well-known authors like Salman Rushdie and Thomas Pynchon. Many of Pynchon’s novels, like “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “The Crying of Lot 49,” are known for their convoluted stories and intricate web of characters which capture the turmoil and paranoia of the post-World War II era.

Read More: Philip Larkin as a movement poet

In a similar way, Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses” make use of magical realism and intertextual connections to challenge readers’ perceptions of the limits of story and the nature of truth. In postmodern literature, storytelling develops into a self-aware, frequently lighthearted activity that invites readers to actively interact with the text, encouraging a feeling of ambiguity and intellectual curiosity.

Postcolonial Literature

The postmodern era marked the emergence of postcolonial literature as a key and defining feature. This genre explores the intricacies of postcolonial identity while giving light on the stories and experiences of nations that had been colonized by European powers. Through novels like “Things Fall Apart,” authors like Chinua Achebe addressed the cultural conflicts and changes that took place when colonial forces established their rule. Salman Rushdie expertly tackled issues of postcolonial identity and hybridity in works like “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses,” utilizing magical realism and intertextuality to successfully negotiate the challenging terrain of cultural displacement and reclamation. A more inclusive and diversified literary environment emerged during the Postmodern Period as a result of postcolonial literature, which questioned the Eurocentric viewpoints of the past and provided a forum for voices that had long been marginalized.

Read More: Seamus Heaney as a modern poet

Magic Realism

A key element of Postmodern writing is magic realism, which intentionally blurs the line between truth and fiction. This narrative approach makes it possible for the mystical and mundane to coexist in a single story, frequently in a matter-of-fact way. Through novels like “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” writers like Gabriel Garcia Márquez infused their stories with supernatural aspects that were considered as commonplace in the story’s setting. Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Children” uses magic realism in a similar way to weave a tapestry of supernatural incidents into the fabric of daily life. By using this technique, authors enthrall readers with a sense of wonder while delving into deep issues and cultural complexity. Magic realism is a prime example of the Postmodern Period’s tendency for unorthodox narrative and its capacity to capture the surreal nature of modern life.

Experimental Drama

Experimental theater during the Postmodern Period challenged conventional theatrical rules by pushing the limitations of what could be explored on stage. Playwrights like Samuel Beckett defied conventional narrative frameworks and character motives in ground-breaking plays like “Waiting for Godot,” leaving audiences wrestling with existential issues and uncertainty. Plays by Tom Stoppard, such as “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” recreated well-known stories from fresh perspectives, questioning the very nature of existence. This dramaturgical innovation paralleled the Postmodern Period’s more general themes of fragmentation, alienation, and a continuous quest to subvert established norms.

Read More: Waiting for Godot as an absurd play

Key Themes and Characteristics

Metafiction and intertextuality.

Metafiction and intertextuality have become defining characteristics of postmodern literature. The writers of this time period played with literary conventions and texts, weaving dense webs of allusions and connections to earlier works. They merged the worlds of fiction and reality, allowing readers to explore a self-aware literary environment where tales were continually interacting with the canon. In addition to highlighting the depth of literary legacy, this intertextual technique pushed the limits of narrative authority and established storytelling conventions. It promoted a sense of literary inquiry and intellectual engagement by encouraging readers to take an active role in the process of meaning production.

Cultural Hybridity and Identity

Identity and cultural hybridity started to dominate Postmodern literature. Reflecting a world characterized by growing globalization and connection, authors struggled with the complications of diversity and the experiences of diaspora. This literature challenged rigid identities and narratives by showing people negotiating the fluid and changing landscapes of race, culture, and belonging. Works like Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” and “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie depicted the blending of many cultural components, defying preconceived ideals of authenticity and purity. In a world where identities are continually changing and where barriers between cultures are transparent and dynamic, postmodern authors praised the hybrid, the in-between, and the interrelated.

Parody and irony

Irony and parody were important literary devices used by Postmodern writers to critique social norms and customs. Irony was a literary device utilized at this time to show the absurdity of modern life and subvert expectations. Postmodern literature frequently had satirical elements, enabling them to expose the fallacies and hypocrisies of society. Authors like Kurt Vonnegut used a mix of dark humor and irony in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five” to subvert the conventional accounts of war and time. The absurdities of the modern world were celebrated in postmodern literature, which also used irony and parody as powerful tools for examining society and cultural criticism.

Fragmentation and Hyperreality

Hyperrealism and fragmentation were key elements of postmodern writings. In order to reflect the fragmented nature of modern life, authors of this time used fragmented storylines and nonlinear storytelling techniques. These storytelling strategies made readers work to make sense of the mosaic of fragmented storylines, reflecting the bewildering effects of a society flooded with information and media. Works like Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” and Don DeLillo’s “White Noise” are examples of this disconcerting narrative style and provide readers a look into the hyperreal world of postmodern existence. A distinguishing feature of the Postmodern Period, the blurred lines between the real and the simulated were explored through the fragmentation of both the narrative and reality itself.

Notable Figures of the Postmodern Period

A number of great writers helped to transform the field of contemporary literature throughout the Postmodern Period. Thomas Pynchon, known for his complicated plots and sarcastic examinations of modernity, questioned traditional storytelling in works like “Gravity’s Rainbow.” The landmark works “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie explored diversity and the difficulties of identity. Gabriel Garcia Márquez, a genius of magic realism, captivated readers with his vivid stories, such as “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” John Ashbery, a significant figure in American poetry, infused his writings with an avant-garde sensibility. The absurdism of the time was best encapsulated in Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” Lastly, Toni Morrison delved deeply into issues of race, identity, and memory in works like “Beloved.” These authors not only embraced the postmodern attitude of experimentation, but they also offered deep insights into the complex structure of modern life.

Read More: Waiting for Godot as a tragicomed y

In conclusion, English literature and culture underwent a major transition during the Postmodern Period. This time period pushed the limits of literary expression by engaging with literary traditions in a playful manner, exploring cultural hybridity and identity, using irony and parody liberally, and fragmenting narratives. Authors of the postmodern era struggled with the difficulties of living in a quickly evolving world that was characterized by interstate wars, technical advancements, and a culture that was flooded with information. Their works continue to resonate as mirrors reflecting the complexities and tensions of contemporary existence. The relevance of the Postmodern Period has persisted because of its lasting impact on literature and society, which encouraged later writers and philosophers to analyze, dissect, and rewrite the stories that define how we view the world.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Postmodernism

Introduction, general overviews and reference.

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International Postmodernism
New Subjectivities
Temporality, History, and Memory
Literary Theory
(Historiographic) Metafiction, Metanarrative, and Intertextuality
Drama and Performance
The “End” of Postmodernism

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Postmodernism by Tim Woods LAST REVIEWED: 22 August 2023 LAST MODIFIED: 22 August 2023 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0048

“Postmodernism” has been a notoriously difficult term to define, and it has had a complicated history across various disciplines. Nevertheless, the idea largely emerged in the late 1950s in the humanities to indicate a sense that modernism had been superseded by a new cultural, aesthetic, and critical agenda. Some theorists have treated “postmodernism” as an epochal or historical term, while others have regarded it as an aesthetic or formal characteristic that is not limited to a particular era. Initially, it found its principal purchase in cultural philosophy, literature, architecture, art, and cultural theory, but it has subsequently affected and influenced debates across a wide range of disciplines, including international politics, psychology, law, history, sociology, and even town planning and medicine. As its concepts and ideas found purchase within intellectual debates, many saw in postmodernism an emancipation from the institutional straitjacketing of culture, while others, in turn, regarded postmodernism as an abandonment of social and intellectual responsibility that was symptomatic of a cultural decline with the ascendancy of late capitalism. Despite this wrangle over its political and ideological implications, in broad philosophical terms postmodernism tends to focus on reconceptualizing notions of subjectivity and gender, concepts of temporality, history, space, and place, and the relationships of power between races, ethnicities, and different cultural spheres of influence across global communities. The advent of postmodern thought has been a story of uneven development across various disciplines. This has meant that in certain disciplines where postmodern theory arrived early, there has been little recent theoretical development of postmodern ideas, while some disciplines have seen major theoretical discussions emerging since around 1990. However, since postmodernism has been around in intellectual debates since the 1960s, we have reached a stage where a history of postmodernism can now be written. Furthermore, it would be fair to say that more recently, across disciplines like literature, art, and history, the debate has switched from discussing the opportunities opened up by postmodern ideas to considerations of whether it has had its day and what its trajectory and future legacy to theoretical and cultural concerns might be.

The difficulties in unraveling the nuances and explaining the refinements of the concept of postmodernism have led to numerous attempts to illuminate the term. Ranging between approving and fiercely skeptical tones, such introductory books are nevertheless useful springboards for diving into more detailed investigations. Appignanesi and Garratt 1995 is part of a longstanding series that seeks to offer cultural explanations through the medium of the cartoon and is very accessible for that reason. Silverman 1990 and Tester 1993 offer sets of essays on the impact that postmodernism has had on a variety of disciplines. Although most of the overviews are introductory by nature, Taylor and Winquist 1998 seeks to provide a thorough coverage of the different fields influenced by postmodernism, stretching to four volumes of extracts, manifestos, and key essays. Generally, these books are best read in conjunction with others, and Taylor and Winquist 2001 is a very helpful short-entry companion that can act as a supplementary aide to most overviews on the subject. One major source of research discussion that has rapidly become the standard journal for the cultural concept is Postmodern Culture , whose very digital medium facilitates debates about the innovative formal and experimental styles of postmodern literature and culture. Madsen 1995 and McCaffery 1986 between them provide excellent specialist bibliographical sources to support the bibliographies found in most reference books and general introductions.

Appignanesi, Richard, and Chris Garratt. Postmodernism for Beginners . Cambridge, UK: Icon, 1995.

Offering the series’ familiar cartoon-style approach to intellectual concepts and ideas, this book covers postmodernism across art, theory, and history in an approachable and humorous fashion.

Madsen, Deborah. Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926–1994 . Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995.

DOI: 10.1163/9789004647282

An exhaustive bibliographical list of articles and books that engage with postmodernism.

McCaffery, Larry, ed. Postmodern Fiction: A Bio-bibliographical Guide . Westwood, CT: Greenwood, 1986.

The scope of the work is broad, with European and Latin American influences well represented. Recommended for research that emphasizes fiction of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.

Postmodern Culture . 1990–.

Postmodern Culture has become the leading electronic journal of interdisciplinary thought on contemporary cultures. As an entirely web-based journal, PMC publishes still images, sound, animation, and full-motion video as well as text.

Silverman, Hugh J., ed. Postmodernism: Philosophy and the Arts . New York: Routledge, 1990.

A range of readable essays, in which the first part raises general theoretical questions about the language and politics of postmodernism, and the second part focuses on some particular “sites”—architecture, painting, literature, theater, photography, film, television, dance, fashion. Contains a helpful bibliography of books, articles, and journals on postmodernism.

Taylor, Victor E., and Charles E. Winquist, eds. Postmodernism: Critical Concepts . 4 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Seeking exhaustive coverage of the whole range of the humanities and some social sciences, this is a monumental multivolume collection of key essays and theorists. The four volumes are organized into “Foundational Essays,” “Critical Texts,” “Disciplinary Texts: Humanities and Social Sciences,” and “Legal Studies, Psychoanalytic Studies, Visual Arts and Architecture.”

Taylor, Victor E., and Charles E. Winquist, eds. Encyclopedia of Postmodernism . London: Routledge, 2001.

Organized alphabetically, this is a thorough coverage of the ideas that led up to postmodernism, its key concepts, key theorists, major works, and targeted supplementary reading lists. Written in dictionary-style short entries, it is also helpfully cross-referenced.

Tester, Keith. The Life and Times of Postmodernity . London: Routledge, 1993.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203216989

This book offers an introductory albeit skeptical appraisal of postmodernism as a “great transformation.” It regards postmodernism as a reflection of the problems of modernism, focusing on issues of identity, nostalgia, technology, responsibility, and the other.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Postmodern British Poetry

Postmodern British Poetry

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 12, 2017 • ( 0 )

If the era of ‘ postmodernity ’ is increasingly seen as ‘a socio-economic mode that has intensified and surpassed modernity itself’ then poetry produced under this new ‘socio-economic mode’ might rightly be dismissed as another form of ‘postmodern’ candyfloss neatly packaged for our quick or therapeutic consumption.1 On the other hand perhaps poets, often relatively uninvested in the capital of a culture industry, which is currently terming itself in its latest guise as ‘postmodern’, are one of the few cultural producers left who can afford to be sceptical of the current era and of the claims of culture itself. Paradoxically, this means that poetry has the potential to be the most ‘ postmodern ’ and the most ‘anti-postmodern’ of the arts. Anthologies of the period reflect the unease with which contemporary poets and critics have embraced and subsequently distanced themselves from such an elastic term. Although there is some overlap between poets represented in anthologies of British poetry since 1980, what is most striking is the divergence between them that marks an important and decisive split in post-war poetry in Britain. Poets from both groupings have been termed ‘ postmodern ’.

There are clearly a number of definitions of the ‘postmodern’ in operation here. The first is linked to the branding, dilution (under the guise of accessibility) and commodification of intellectual and creative activity which have become key features of the ‘postmodern’ era. The second relates to the formal and conceptual features of ‘postmodernism’ as it has developed in relation to other disciplines such as architecture and the visual arts. The editors of The New Poetry (1993) describe their selection as emphasising ‘accessibillity, democracy and responsiveness, humour and seriousness’.2 These are all features which appear to relate to the eclecticism of ‘postmodernism’, as it has been described by critics such as Charles Jencks and Hal Foster , but they are also consistent with the commodification of art in the ‘postmodern socio-economic mode’ identified by Nigel Wheale. In their introduction to the Penguin Book of Contemporary British 42 Poetry (1981), Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion suggest that the poets included in their anthology ‘do represent a departure, one which may be said to exhibit something of the spirit of postmodernism’.3 It is not clear which features of the poetry Morrison and Motion are referring to, but Ian Gregson has called this an ‘unhelpful and at worst simply wrong’ use of the term applied as it is here to poets such as Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison and Douglas Dunn, whose lyric sensibilities and commitment to normative syntax do not allow for the kind of radical questioning of the limits of representation itself which are key features of the postmodern artwork.4 By contrast some, though certainly not all, of the contemporary poets included in A Various Art (1987), The New British Poetry (1988), Conductors of Chaos (1996) and the Oxford Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry 2001 do have characteristics in common with the conceptual, formal and political possibilities of postmodernism as they have been emerging in other disciplines. This does not make them exempt from the allpervasive effects of cultural marketeering and the attendant culpability associated with the postmodern. As Robert Hampson points out in relation to Ezra Pound ’s famous dictum, ‘ ‘‘Make It New’’ has to confront the fact that ‘‘the new’’ is also used to sell the latest car or weapons system.’5

Another distinction between contemporary poetries can be made between their different strategies of production and distribution: ‘Unlike the Penguin Anthology , both A Various Art and The New British Poetry draw on a wealth of poetic production that was enabled in the 1960s and 1970s by cheapish mimeo and offset litho.’6 Hampson ’s comment draws attention to the way in which some contemporary poets have continued to operate through networks of production and distribution which have different priorities than those of the dominant market forces. The possibilities of a particular type of postmodern poem in Britain can be seen to have resisted definition by the current ‘socio-economic mode’ at the same time as they have utilised its emerging technologies, i.e., cheaper and more widely available office reproduction equipment such as mimeo and photocopying machines, to make chapbooks and magazines. Craig Saper has coined the term ‘intimate bureacracy’ to describe such artist-led operations which ‘appropriate the trappings of systems now common in big business’ and ‘perform processes, rituals and trappings of bureaucracies, but as alternatives to mass-media distribution networks’.7 Despite this performative appropriation (which often occurs both in the making and writing of the work itself and in its modes of publication and distribution), many of these poets are keen to avoid the use of the term ‘ postmodernism ’, allied as it is with delusions of cultural capital and a culture industry which is intent on commodifiying intellectual labour. In recent years the decision to call oneself ‘neo-modernist’, ‘late modernist’ as opposed to ‘ postmodernist ’ is a determined gesture on the part of some poets and critics to avoid the latest dominant cultural whim of the fashion market in ideas. Those poets whose work has most in common with postmodernism ’s conceptual and formal possibilities in other disciplines are least likely to want to apply the term ‘postmodernism’ to their work. As Peter Middleton argues, ‘Maybe the difficulty that the term ‘‘postmodernism’’ raises is due to its readiness to supplant those other capacious names for our condition: imperialism, capitalism, and particularly consumerism.’8

Nevertheless, some of the aspects of postmodernism worth pursuing in relation to poetry include those conceptual and formal possibilities for the postmodern artwork outlined by Francois Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition (1979). A consideration of representation and its apparently inevitable ‘impossibility’ is fundamental to Lyotard ’s description of the tendencies of the postmodern artwork. In the work of many contemporary poets this translates into a particular approach to language itself; language is utilised not as an apparently transparent conduit for the emotions of the poet. Language has been shaped by and is shaping the social and political forces throughout our culture and this is the necessary subject of the postmodern poet who does not approach representation in language as pure and unmediated material: instead language becomes foregrounded as both the medium and the potential subject of poetry. As Richard Kerridge writes of the work of J. H. Prynne , ‘Language is exposed as system, not inhabited as utterance.’9 This is analogous with the postmodern move in the visual arts to produce work which acts like ‘a dye in the bloodstream [ . . . ] to delineate the circulation system of art’.10 For the poet, the actual language of the poem is the ‘dye in the bloodstream’ that highlights and diverts the routes of the everyday ‘bloodstream’ of communication and representation. This is similar to Charles Jencks ’s description of ‘Post-Modernism’ in architecture as ‘double coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else’.11 In poetry this ‘double coding’ is at work in writers who draw attention to forms and genres and who recast them in contemporary settings; a more complex and endlessly refracting ‘double-coding’ occurs when poets foreground the coded nature of language itself and its saturated ideologies. This is the case in Drew Milne ’s Go Figure (2003):

This imperium’s eagle spreads ancient wings as the saying goes ahem friends Romans and globalists most dextrous ego-surfers of the remotest control say go figure let slip the bristling clusters and gas from each harsh Doric column stabbed long and hard into a ruin of sea and dimpled air most cleaving indifference over physical features that depict no political borders lost upon spicy chicken wings as claws do special resolutions in pink cartoons nails down tankers the chalk on board thing and the gas is all for oil, galley slave of this grade class fellow-guzzling petrol 12

The poem is more than ‘double-coded’ with a variety of registers: Shakespeare ( Mark Antony’s speech on Caesar’s death ), the language of the Internet and digital communications, the vocabulary of war and of specific bombs and weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq, classical architecture, globalism, fast-food, advertising, education, slavery, oil, flight and quantification. In Milne ’s poem none of these codings is allowed to remain fully intact and impermeable, each is bent and refracted to meet another ‘double-coding’ which proliferates at each intersection into further contextual overlays before it can become fixed in anything as simple as parody or quotation. The reader proceeds through recognition and continual readjustment of expectation as ‘countrymen’ become ‘globalists’, ‘channel surfers’ become ‘ego-surfers’ and political borders are lost. The poem is at once a Disney-like cartoon of existence and also a diagrammatic cartoon; ‘the chalk on board thing’ of a landscape or a world-view from the fractured perspective of a ‘galley slave’ or airline passenger, whose class identity is determined by the ‘grade’ on his ticket rather than his social background.

Lyotard describes the postmodern era as being characterised by a dispersal of ‘clouds of narrative language elements’ and within each cloud ‘are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind’ and ‘each of us lives at the intersection of many of these’.13 This description is useful as a way to think about reading elements of Drew Milne ’s Go Figure which sometimes appear to be made up of ‘clouds of narrative language elements’ which have been dispersed across a series of tightly controlled structures. The poem offers us a ‘pragmatics of language particles’ which are to be negotiated as the reader makes her way through its ‘intersections’. For Lyotard it is essential that the postmodern artwork occupy the space at the ‘intersection of the clouds’ as an alternative to the usual structures of power and control:

The decision makers, however, attempt to manage these clouds of sociality according to the input/output matrices, following a logic which implies that their elements are commensurable and that the whole is determinable.14

Go Figure is in direct conflict with the attempt to manage these ‘clouds’ with numbers. The logics of management are not commensurable with the linguistic project of the poem which is to resist the tyranny of statistics that seek to replace figures with ‘figures’.

One of the defining features of the so-called postmodern era has been the academic rehabilitation of many of the different strands of Modernism which were initially passed over or actively lost from the official histories of the first part of the twentieth century. At the same time some recent accounts of postmodernity have been just as sceptical of the inclusion of poetry as poets have been of being termed postmodern. If postmodernism is ‘a principled reaction to modernism’, then the problem of situating British poetry in relation to the contexts of postmodernism has to confront the vexed question of the relationships contemporary poetry in Britain can be said to have to the formal innovations, politics and new subjectivities that Modernism produced.15

There are a number of positions which seem tenable. At first glance the apparently single and certainly dominant grand narrative account of postwar verse history sketched through successive anthologies such as The Penguin Book of Contemporary Poetry (1982) and The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland Since 1945 (1998)might imply that contemporary British poetry is in fact both ante-modern and anti-modernist. That is to say that, for the most part, the contemporary poets featured in these anthologies bypass the radical trajectory of possibilities offered by writers such as Hope Mirrlees, Ezra Pound , Mina Loy, David Jones , Hugh MacDiarmid and W. S. Graham , in favour of an extension of the dispiriting conservatism of the Movement poets whose roots lie in the poetry of Thomas Hardy and early W. B. Yeats .

The reaction of the Movement poets to the modernisms of the earlier century can certainly be read as a ‘principled reaction to modernism’ in that they wrote as if Modernism had never happened. Chronologically speaking the Movement poets of the 1950s are the postmodernists of twentieth century poetry and perhaps in them we have the postmodernism we deserve. Edward Lucie-Smith writes somewhat regretfully in 1985, in the revised introduction to his anthology British Poetry Since 1945 , that:

In general . . . it must be said that the full reconciliation between the modernist spirit and British poetry which I looked forward to in 1970 has yet to take place. The most discussed new poets, often brilliantly accomplished within the fairly strict limits they have chosen for themselves, are often not only conservatives, but ones bold enough to flaunt their own conservatism. Indeed, they seem to look upon a declared hostility to modernism as being in itself a form of innovation – which perhaps, taken in the broader context, it actually is.16

Rather than innovations of form, the 1950s produced innovative hostilities to Modernism which have been maintained in official verse culture to the present, and this necessarily has implications for how it becomes possible to draw a map of a possible postmodern poetics.

In contrast to the Movement, increasingly it has become the task of the contemporary poet and critic to approach Anglo-American Modernism as the ‘cultural construction around selective aesthetic and ideological values, and not as a thing in itself’.17 The reinterpretation of this ‘cultural construction’ opens new paths of conceptualisation between the early twentieth century and the twenty-first century. Similarly, the relationship between both what Peter Brooker calls ‘hegemonic modernism’ and the twentieth-century’s avant-garde is essential to consider if the postmodern poem is to be read as more than a by-product of capitalism, or what Drew Milne calls ‘the hot air balloon debates of postmodernism’, in which ‘Madonna and Public Enemy fight it out for critical attention’.18 This suturing of a previous century’s avant-garde onto the consideration of contemporary writing clearly throws up problems of terminology for Lyotard in the naming of the postmodern art work:

I do not like the term avant-garde, with its military connotations, any more than anyone else. But I do observe that the true process of avant-gardism was in reality a kind of work, a long obstinate and highly responsible work concerned with investigating the assumptions implicit in modernity.19

Lyotard ’s description connects the ethical responsibities of the avant-garde with that of the postmodern poet and it aligns the potential of the postmodern poem with a practice of writing bent on ‘investigating the assumptions implicit in modernity’ which does not situate itself beyond the possibility that it will be complicit with the very fabric of the cultural ideologies which it seeks to unfix.

To emphasise the continuities with Modernism , Rod Mengham ( Vanishing xvii ) and Drew Milne use the terms ‘late Modernist’ and ‘Neomodernist Avant-Garde’ respectively to describe poetry which, because of its formal characteristics, might in other discussions of contemporary art forms be termed ‘postmodern’. This alternative terminology, employed to uphold the links between contemporary British poetry and radical or avant-garde modernist writings, forcibly rejects a connection to the Movement poets and their successors whose verse can be characterised as ‘a closed, monolineal utterance, demanding little of the reader but passive consumption’.20 By contrast many of the formal strategies of the ‘late modernist’ and ‘Neo-Modernist avant-garde’ poem – lack of closure, narrative redistribution, use of procedural methodologies of writing, fragmentation and proliferation of the lyric subject, use of found material, a demand for the active engagement of the reader and so on – are clearly to be found in the work of British Modernists such as Hope Mirrlees, Basil Bunting, David Jones , Mina Loy and W. S. Graham . Nevertheless, the danger of such strategies of extended recuperation is that they might be seen as merely a ‘carrying-on, in somewhat diluted form, of the avant-garde project that had been at the very heart of early modernism’ rather than presenting new directions for contemporary work which breaks with previous traditions.21 This recuperation is more than this as it offers a new space for the contextualisation of contemporary work which highlights the innovative and the experimental use of form and procedure as central to the history of poetry and poetics in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Ironically, this history is itself a series of what Lyotard would term ‘postmodern micronarratives’ which are partial and fractured and emerge from many different modernisms. These micronarratives are themselves in flux and are constantly being reshaped according to the constant critical reshaping of modernism. According to Lyotard , ‘the ‘‘post-’’ of ‘‘postmodern’’ does not signify a movement of comeback, flashback or feedback , that is, not a movement of repetition but a procedure in ‘‘ana-’’: a procedure of analysis, anamnesis, anagogy and anamorphosis which elaborates an ‘‘initial forgetting’’’.22

Modernism is certainly not the only context for considering a ‘postmodern’ poetry. Eric Mottram termed the period between 1960 and 1975 ‘The British Poetry Revival’ because so many magazines, presses and publications flourished in Britain at this time. Wendy Mulford , poet and publisher, whose work emerged from a generation of writers who came to prominence in the UK in the late 1970s and early 1980s, describes the direction of influence on her and her contemporaries as involving a ‘search [which] took them to the theoretical considerations about language welling up in Europe, and back to the USA’.23 One of the important contexts for the development of postmodern poetry was the rediscovery of European Modernism as mediated by the US Modernist tradition. Donald Allen’s ground-breaking anthology The New Poetry, 1945–1960 (1960) introduced new American and British readers to the late Modernist poetry of the Black Mountain, New York and San Francisco schools. Later UK magazines such as Reality Studios, Spectacular Diseases , Archeus and fragmente were crucial in facilitating the ongoing ‘transatlantic shuffle’ in late Modernist poetry.24 Fulcrum Press published work by Modernist writers such as Basil Bunting and George Oppen and introduced a British audience to poets such as Ed Dorn and Robert Duncan . It also published British poets such as Tom Raworth and Lee Harwood so as to emphasise a parity of concerns between poetry in the United States and Britain. The readers of such magazines also absorbed the influences of Black Mountain, the Beats, the New York School and the ideas and techniques of writers associated with the magazine L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (1978–1982).

There is certainly an eclecticism of influence in British postmodern poetries that shows a merging of high and low culture, of previous and contemporary styles from ‘open field, projective verse, sound text, concrete poetry, surrealist and dada developments, pop lyrics, and various conceptual forms’.25 Contemporary poets such as Denise Riley are involved in a play of identification and subversion of many of the forms and traditions of poetry. Riley offers a reworking and reconsideration, rather than an absolute rejection, of poetic conventions such as the lyric subject. This is seen in Wherever You Are, Be Somewhere Else , which presents an intertextual fabric of echoes and allusions embedded at various depths within the poem, recycling lines from Scottish ballads and The Peach Blossom Fan by K’ung Shang-jen . The poem juxtaposes the conventional idea of the function of poetry as a form of lyric transport out of the everyday with the potential escapism of a computer game; both are inhabited by the poet and found to be wanting. There is no hierarchical distinction made between the solace of the lyric poem and that of the computer game, and the boundaries between each mode of escapism are blurred by the interchangable role of the computer as a games console and an instrument for writing lyric poetry. The technologised mediation of subjectivity is foregrounded in both poem and game. In keeping with this the poem simultaneously describes both its own construction and that of its lyric subject in the first verse as:

A body shot through, perforated, a tin sheet beaten out then peppered with thin holes, silvery, leaf-curled at their edges; light flies

right through this tracery, voices leap, slip sidelong, all faces split to angled facets: whichever piece is glimpsed, that bit is what I am, held

in a look until dropped like an egg on the floor let slop, crashed to slide and run, yolk yellow for the live, the dead who worked through me. 26

This is an uneasy affirmation of the lyric voice foregrounded alongside the fact of its own constructed nature which is as ‘artificially made’ as the poem itself: ‘a tin sheet / beaten out then peppered with thin holes’ and a ‘tracery’ through which ‘voices leap’. The hybridity of this lyric voice is emphasised by the title of the poem which echoes a Nintendo Game Boy slogan. The artificial is not simply confined to the allusions to technology, it also relates to the language registers of the poem itself. Lines 10–27 outline a nightmare vision of eggs cracking open to reveal snakes, a near-suicidal leap over a glacier and a blinded and gagged lyric speaker who is terrified of ‘being left’ alone. This, it seems, is just an illusion, akin to the unfolding narrative on a Game Boy that has been worked up by the poet:

I can try on these gothic riffs, they do make a black twitchy cloak to both ham up and so perversely dignify my usual fear of ends

Riley is trying on various guises offered to the lyric subject, hamming it up without identifying with any single subject position or discourse: ‘a million surfaces without a tongue and I never have wanted / ‘‘a voice’’ anyway, nor got it. Alright’. As Lyotard points out, the postmodern writer positions herself outside the possibility of an identification with one ‘Voice’; instead she writes to undo any such certainty: ‘One writes against language but not necessarily with it. To say what it already knows how to say is not writing.’ 27 Riley expresses a desire for the self-expression of the lyric ‘I’ at the same time as she recognises that this is a nostalgic reaching after a simulacra of authenticity which she knows to be illusory: ‘so I go to the wordprocessor longing for line cables / to loop out of the machine straight to my head’. Language does not loop out of her head in natural waves; there is no binary split between a ‘natural’ voice of poetry and an ‘unnatural’ medium of technology. Both seem to offer modes of speaking or writing but each represents its own barrier or interface, however negotiable, between subject and the world that cannot be taken for granted. This is very different from a poem which ‘assumes’ that it ‘is the record of an ‘‘I’’ speaking its loves and losses’ directly and transparently to the reader, which, as Peter Middleton says, is ‘a self untouched by postmodernism’.28

Another strand of poetic production in Britain, characterised by the very different work of Allen Fisher, Bob Cobbing and cris cheek is one which foregrounds process and procedure in the making of the work. This emphasis has some similarities to the pataphysical writings of the French OULIPO group but the work of these British poets is less explicity rule-based and is more likely to derive its dynamic from the repetition, translation and transformation of various sonic, semantic or visual characteristics of an initial text.

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Allen Fisher ’s main works include two poem sequences that have been published serially as chapbooks and pamphlets since the 1970s and recently collected as Place (2005) and Gravity (2005). Place moves through London on various experiential and textual levels. In his introduction Fisher describes his mode of composition as both ‘process and process-showing’, an approach which he has developed out of a methodological synthesis of the ‘open field’ poetics of Charles Olson with the process-showing systematic procedures of Jackson Mac Low . Mac Low often prefaces his poem sequences with an account of the steps he has taken to make a poem. Fisher does not include such details but often the actions that have been performed on the text become apparent through patterns of sonic or visual repetition in the reading of the poem. Like Mac Low, Fisher includes a list of the source materials that he has consulted and used within each poem. These are not so much a reading list that has to be followed to understand the poem but more like a demarcation of the textual field.

Like Olson, Fisher uses the page visually, incorporates found materials and uses a process-based poetics that has similarities to Olson’s ‘FIELD COMPOSITION’ poetics as outlined in ‘ Projective Verse ’. In this wellknown manifesto Olson calls for a move away from a poetry based on the individual ego of the poet, what he calls ‘the private-soul-at-any-public-wall’ which produces a ‘closed verse’. He sees the poem as ‘a high energyconstruct’ and ‘at all points, an energy discharge’ which is mediated between poet and reader.29 Similarly, Fisher’s poems demonstrate an interest in the physics of conducted energy between different substances. This also becomes an analogy for reading and writing. In ‘second release Homage to Charles Olson’, Fisher writes:

Your place is this moving field of resources around a war of the intellect that is exuberant and not aggressive a dance preceding mechanics knowing rest in kinesis ‘how to act fiercely but, with dignity’ not centred but craving to continue, speaking getting at matters that way learning how to alert hearing in intense extempores that continually reshape the going moves. 30

Fisher’s own practice has much in common with what he identifies in Olson here as being a strategy of writing which balances out apparently opposing impulses towards a fixing and an unfixing of meaning in ‘a war of the intellect’, or between the ‘preceding mechanics’ of poetic form and the ‘dance’ or energy of the poem which manifests itself in a process of writing which generates its own logics of continuation and proliferation. Similarly the ‘hearing’ and attention of the poet is directed through writing even as it remains open to all possibilities, ‘in intense extempores’, of risk and chance encounter which might deflect the poem from its apparent subject. Important for both Fisher and Olson is the way in which the writing and reading process can keep in play ‘this moving field of resources’ that is ‘continually’ reshaping itself through the negotiation of this dynamic.

This stress on motility and fluidity in both Olson and Fisher might usefully be considered in relation to the distinction that Roland Barthes makes between ‘work’ and ‘text’; Barthes differentiates between the tangible and physical quality of ‘the work’ as it appears as ‘a fragment of substance’ in books and libraries and the text which is experienced as ‘a methodological field’, ‘a process of demonstration’ or through ‘an activity of production’.31 Fisher’s Place would seem to be studded with fragments of works (local history, science, literature, philosophy and music) that have been activated in a methodological field of encounter which blurs the distinction between the activities of reading and writing. Place can be approached as a ‘textbetween’ of many others which must be set going by the reader rather than consumed.

Place was being planned and written at the same time as Fisher was involved in the development of Fluxus in Britain during the 1970s; Fisher’s poetics are allied to the redefinition of visual arts practice which ‘dematerialised’ the art object. Art objects were replaced with language, diagrams, ephemeral propositions, performance. In The Topological Shovel Fisher describes how ‘art as objects and poetry as poems’ have ‘gradually lost credibility’, to be replaced by ‘many attentions of activity’ that are ‘process’ and ‘idea-oriented’.32 This redistribution of ‘attentions of activity’ is central to any consideration of the political possibilities of a contemporary poetry. It also clearly stands at odds with a poetry which marks accessible vocabulary and easily assimilable thematic content as necessarily democratic and inclusive to the exclusion of all other forms of writing. The reaching after these ‘attentions of activity’ might have the effect of transforming the poem utterly away from known poetic conventions; from ‘poetry as poems’.

Lyotard characterises a postmodern artist or writer as one who produces a text that cannot be judged by ‘the application of given categories’. Like Allen Fisher, who has also made work in performance and the visual arts as well as poetry, a growing number of practitioners are producing work at the interstices of disciplinary boundaries, often between the visual arts and writing in bookarts, installation, digital poetics, live-art and performance. These practitioners are engaged in what Lyotard terms the investigation into ‘rules and categories’ of the contexts and sites of their textual practice and often their work moves in various manifestations between the gallery and the page. Practitioners in this mode include Susan Johanknecht, Brian Catling, Caroline Bergvall, John Cayley and cris cheek.

Susan Johanknecht ’s Modern (Laundry) Production (2001) is a striking example of a bookart that also functions as a sculptural installation. In bookarts the physical form and the linguistic content of the book are often read simultaneously. Johanknecht ’s book is a double-sided concertinafolded sheet of paper that comes in a slip case. The poem utilises found images and text from 1940s manuals and accounts of laundry production in combination with Donna Haraway’s ‘A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism for the 1980s’ (1985). When it is unfolded horizontally it is long enough to be held between the fully outstretched arms of the reader, but in order to read the text of the bookwork the reader must feed it vertically through her hands, an action which, as the reading progresses, begins to echo the actions of a laundry worker feeding sheets through an industrial press. The book has also been shown as part of gallery installations: in this context it hangs from the ceiling and is situated alongside a video monitor showing slides of cropped images of the laundresses at work. Through the reader’s physical interaction with Modern (Laundry) Production a wry comparison is invited between the performance of reading and the performance of the role of the laundress in an increasingly industrialised and dehumanising environment.

We are now, according to Alan Gilbert, in the ‘twilight’ of a postmodern era, in which grand narratives such as ‘economic realm market fundamentalism’ reassert themselves.33 Some poets, eager for assimilation, have been co-opted into service by the cultural-lite demands of the postmodern high street, while others prefer to maintain a foothold in alternative modes of production and networks of distribution which have been recently facilitated by the Internet and by the development of new technologies of printing and production. Although it seems inevitable that poetry cannot possibly stand in isolation from the emerging new economies of labour, leisure and consumption of which it too is a part, it does appear necessary to distinguish between a postmodern poetics which actively resists the commodification of culture, and a poetry that is being branded with terms such as ‘postmodernism’ for ease of marketability, a term which is often in the ‘postmodern era’ wrongly made synonymous with accessibility. The work of Milne, Riley, Fisher and Johanknecht reaches out of the autonomous niche afforded to poetry by closely guarded disciplinary and nationally constituted boundaries. Each writer foregrounds practices and methodologies of writing which demonstrate an awareness of and a refusal to capitulate to the commodification of the cultural, conceptual and formal possibilities of the ‘postmodern’. Their work makes links back to a previous century’s avant-garde while it remains radically engaged with the possibilities and inevitable contradictions inherent in the negotiation and formulation of a poetry and poetics of the present.

Source: The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry Edited By Neil Corcoran Cambridge University Press 2007

NOTES 1 Nigel Wheale (ed.), The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 14.

2 Michael Hulse, David Kennedy and David Morley (eds.), The New Poetry (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1993), p. 16.

3 Blake Morrison and Andrew Motion (eds.), The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 20.

4 Ian Gregson, Contemporary Poetry and Postmodernism: Dialogue and Estrangement (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 209.

5 Robert Hampson and Peter Barry (eds.) New British Poetries: The Scope of the Possible (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 134.

6 Hampson and Barry (eds.), New British Poetries, p. 5.

7 Craig Saper, Networked Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 16.

8 Peter Middleton, Distant Reading: Performance, Readership and Consumption in Contemporary Poetry (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2005), p. 201.

9 Richard Kerridge and N. H. Reeve, Nearly Too Much: The Poetry of J. H. Prynne (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), p. 109.

10 Hal Foster, ‘Subversive Signs’, in Lawrence E. Cahoone (ed.), From Modernism to Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), p. 313.

11 Charles Jencks, What is Post-Modernism? (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), p. 14.

12 Drew Milne, Go Figure (Cambridge: Salt, 2003), p. 4.

13 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. xxiv.

15 Stuart Sim (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. x.

16 Edward Lucie-Smith (ed.), British Poetry Since 1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp. 24–5.

17 Peter Brooker, ‘Postmodern Postpoetry: Tom Raworth’s ‘‘Tottering State’’’, in Anthony Easthope and John O. Thompson (eds.), Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), p. 154.

18 Drew Milne, ‘Agoraphobia, and the Embarrassment of Manifestos: Notes towards a Community of Risk’, Parataxis: Modernism and Modern Writing, 3 (Spring 1993), 28.

19 Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, p. 93.

20 Richard Caddel and Peter Quatermain (eds.), Other: British and Irish Poetry Since 1970 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1999), p. xv.

21 Marjorie Perloff, 21st-Century Modernism: The ‘New Poetics’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 3.

22 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children: Correspondence 1982–1985 (Sydney: Power Publications, 1992), p. 93.

23 Wendy Mulford, ‘Curved, Odd . . . Irregular’: A Vision of Contemporary Poetry by Women’, Women: A Cultural Review, 1, 3 (Winter 1990), 263.

24 Geoff Ward, Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), p. 186.

25 Hampson and Barry (eds.), New British Poetries, p. 16.

26 Denise Riley, Selected Poems (London: Reality Street, 2000), p. 47.

27 Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained, p. 105.

28 Peter Middleton, ‘Who Am I to Speak? The Politics of Subjectivity in Recent British Poetry’, in Hampson and Barry (eds.), New British Poetries, p. 119.

29 Quotations from Charles Olson, Selected Writings, ed. Robert Creeley (New York: New Directions, 1966).

30 Allen Fisher, Place (Hastings: Reality Street, 2005), p. 398.

31 Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, ed. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1982), pp. 157, 163.

32 Allen Fisher, The Topological Shovel (Ontario: The Gig, 1999), p. 6.

33 Sim (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, p. xi.

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The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism

The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism

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The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism surveys the full spectrum of postmodern culture - high and low, avant-garde and popular, famous and obscure - across a range of fields, from architecture and visual art to fiction, poetry, and drama. It deftly maps postmodernism's successive historical phases, from its emergence in the 1960s to its waning in the first decades of the twenty-first century. Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jefferson Airplane and magical realism, to Jean-François Lyotard, Laurie Anderson and cyberpunk - this book creates a rich picture of a complex cultural phenomenon that continues to exert an influence over our present 'post-postmodern' situation. Comprehensive and accessible, this Introduction is indispensable for scholars, students, and general readers interested in late twentieth-century culture.

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Frontmatter pp i-iv

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Dedication pp v-vi

Contents pp vii-ix, list of figures pp x-x, acknowledgments pp xi-xii, introduction: what was postmodernism pp 1-7, 1 - before postmodernism pp 8-21, 2 - big bang, 1966 pp 22-61, 3 - the major phase: peak postmodernism, 1973–1990 pp 62-122, 4 - interregnum, 1989–2001 pp 123-170, 5 - after postmodernism pp 171-200, references pp 201-220, index pp 221-240, cambridge introductions to literature pp 241-242, altmetric attention score, full text views.

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Post-Modernism in Literature

The 20th-century literature in its stylistic and ideological variety is non-comparable to the literature of the 19th century, where it was possible to allocate only three or four leading movements. At the same time, modern literature has not given more great talents, than the literature of the 19th century.

The previous century appeared as the richest in the variety of literary movements, including directions such as the literature of the absurd, Angry Young Men, Harlem Renaissance, Magic realism, Modernism and etc. One direction that should be specifically outlined is post-modernism. In this research post-modernism as a literary movement will be presented as an analysis of the historical background, writing style, and remarkable authors.

European and American post-modernism have developed in the late sixties and the beginning of the seventies. Unlike classical modernism with its cult of aesthetic novelty and the high aesthetic form, and also gravitation to a system in outlook, postmodernism was based on the cultivation of the art citation, the unoriginal plot, and the simplified language was oriented on simpler taste. The movement has occurred, having in its basis the philosophy of the end of human history, the philosophy of the natural person who is giving in to the dictatorship of psycho-physiological requirements.

The problems of postmodernism’s occurrence, functioning along with their theoretical judgment became the object of consideration of scientists since the sixties of the 20th century. Postmodernism can be considered, as a peculiar level of knowledge in the most developed societies. As it is known, this level of knowledge shows the cultural totality, which can be conditionally called tradition. Postmodernism, as defined by Jean-François Lyotard, represents the position of culture after the transformations which influenced the rules of scientific, artistic, and literary games, since the end of the 19th century. (Lyotard).

It was the end of the 19th century when society experienced a peculiar crisis connected with the formation of utopian ideals of modernism which should have become “a new, unprecedented era”. (Berman 3) Modernism as an aesthetic phenomenon became a tradition antonym. Modernist literature could be characterized by its depth, but postmodern writers aimed at depicting the truth of real-life without trying to make it better or to hide what could arouse resentment in readers.

However, modernism could not achieve its primary goals in the literature: the validation of science and scientific knowledge through the story and the creation of an original set of morality, capable to create as much accepted consensus variant as possible between the author and the reader. Therefore it was obvious, that society and literature were at a new step in the development of thinking and perception, where postmodernism has become such a step.

Postmodernism in the literature started to take a shape in the sixties and the seventies of the 20th century and, as well as modernism, promised salvation. This salvation and social release were imposed on the public in a rather aggressive way. The announcement of the death of the author, the novel, the story, and true art became the main installations of postmodernism. As stated by Federman, one of the theorists of a postmodernism and the author of six novels in such style, “Post-modern fiction experimented with death, or rather with its own death ” (Federman).

Literary postmodernism can be called quotation literature. Playing with citations can be considered as a form of inter-textuality. According to Barthes, it “cannot be reduced to a problem of sources and influences; it is a general field of anonymous formulas whose origin is seldom identifiable, of unconscious or automatic quotations, given without quotation marks.” (Love) In other words, it only seems to the author that he creates, in reality, the culture creates the works using the author as a tool.

In the postmodernism theory, similar literature began to be characterized by the term “the death of the author”, identified by Barthes. (Barthes) It means, that each reader can tower to the author’s level, receive the legitimate right to recklessly finish the work, and attribute to the text any meanings, including the ones initially not assumed by the author. Despite such criticism, the postmodernism literature introduced several notable authors that can be representative of such movements.

One of such authors as Jorge Luis Borges. Jorge Luis Borges – born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 24, 1899, is an Argentinean prose writer, poet and a publicist. Borges is known for the laconic prosaic imaginations which are often masking reasoning on serious scientific problems or taking the form of adventure or detective stories. The effect of the authenticity of fictional events is reached in Borges’s works by introducing a narration of episodes of Argentina’s history and names of contemporary writers, and the facts of own biography. (Ruch) This helps to convince the readers that the events depicted in the work are real, not invented because it is named for the unhidden truth that some readers valued post-modern literature.

When considering Borges as another post-modern writer, it should be mentioned that he, in fact, did not refer to the post-modern era. It is just that some of his works possessed the features characteristic of postmodernism. In regards to the death of the author, in Borges’s works, it is rightfully to talk not about the disappearance of the author as is, but about the change of the quality of the author’s consciousness. The author’s truth is dissolved in the multilevel dialogue of the points of view. As a result, the occurring model of the world looks paradoxical even against modernist paradoxes.

A characteristic example is Borges’ poetry, where Borges’ world consists more likely of texts than from objects and events. In that sense, his story “The Library of Babel” represents not as much dreadful phantasmagoria, as a sufficiently exact model of this world, which is “made of infinite spiraling shelves and staircases endlessly reflected in numbered mirrors.” (Bertens, Bertens and Natoli 3) The word “Babylon” in the name of the story did not mean the ancient city, but apparently, for the author, it was a generality synonym, as well as in “The Lottery in Babylon”, where all population of the fictional city was involved in the lottery. The story was written in Borges’ usual fictional essay form, therefore, practically there was no narration, describing a special, created by the author’s imagination, library-universe.

Another notable author is Thomas Pynchon. Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American writer, one of the founders of the school of black comedy, and a leading representative of the postmodernist literature of the second half of the 20th century. He is the winner of the William Faulkner Foundation Award for the best first novel of the year in 1963, and the winner of the National Book Award in 1974. (Daw)Born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, Pynchon has “most exhaustively covered the hyperreal terrain mapped by postmodern prophet Jean Baudrillard.” (Bertens, Bertens and Natoli 265).

Right from the first acquaintance with Pynchon’s creativity, it shows the number of obstacles that should be overcome to come nearer to understand them. Reading Pynchon, readers incessantly get into traps and are compelled to observe how soon the built logic designs collapse in their eyes. The created system of references, allusions, and mutual reflections, the informational capacity of which is as the capacity of a powerful computer, has made Pynchon a favorite object of academic researches. In “Vineland” for example “Pynchon pays considerable attention to master narratives. He points out the foolishness of such belief systems by undermining the reasoning behind them; he accomplishes this through Sister Rochelle’s anecdotes, Zoyd’s wedding memories, and his own invention of the Thanatos.” (Sullivan).

Last but not least, one of the most famous representatives of literary postmodernism, along with Thomas Pincher, is John Barth. John Barth was born in 1930 in Maryland. After leaving school he studied in one of the most prestigious the Juilliard School of Music, after which he went to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where the future writer majored in Journalism. After finishing University, John Bart was engaged in teaching activities. His first novels, “The Floating Opera” and “The End of the Road “, were published in 1957 and in 1958. The popularity of Barth was brought by the book “The Sot-Weed Factor” after the publishing of which is 1960, the public opinion included the author in the list of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. In 1965 after “Giles Goat-Boy, or, The Revised New Syllabus” had been published, John Barth was considered as one of the top American writers. For the following book, the trilogy “Chimera” (1972), the writer has been awarded the prestigious National Book Award. His subsequent books “Letters”, “The Tidewater Tales “, and the collection “The Friday Book” were considered as classics of postmodern literature. (Mahoney).

As an example of his postmodern books, “Letters” is a bright example of such works. The novel consists of letters that are issued according to strict English rules of etiquette. Each letter has not only a reference, an address, and a date, but also instructions concerning what aspect the message is bearing. Through the characters’ letters, Barth recreates his thoughts, aspirations, and experiences concerning the literature. Therefore epistles differ in a fanciful and mysterious psychological analysis by the means of which, the processes of formation of thoughts, feelings, and author’s intentions are reproduced. (Bertens, Bertens and Natoli 35-38) Embodying his own postmodernist feeling, Barth creates a book about the present’s new and historical reality of the US. Reflecting by the means of images from the “LETTERS”, Barth as a critic acts in the novel as a philosopher and as an art theorist, analyzing literary tendencies which were appearing and disappearing during American history.

Discussing the works of writers who were created in the period of postmodernism, it can be stated that all of them strongly influenced the movement. They affected the essence of literature, its primary goals, and some components which used to characterize the preceding literary tendencies. Firstly, postmodern writers changed the subject depicted in their works. Whereas modern literature was aimed at seeking meaning in the chaotic world, postmodernists only imitated this seeking. The works created in this period of time are the parody of questing the meaning with the writers’ denying its possibility in a playful and sometimes humorous way.

What’s more, postmodern writers changed the way of narration in their works. Little narration started to be used in postmodern literature and the writers were apt to generalize the ideas they expressed in their works avoiding stating their personal opinion which, perhaps, can be regarded as unwillingness to bear responsibility for possibly distorted facts.

Finally, the writers of postmodern literature changed character development and the themes of their works. Subjectivism was typical for postmodern character development; the writers stopped evaluating the characters and information objectively and their works turned into irrational, discontinuous, and shallow. They started paying more attention to the depiction of emotions and immortal issues of friendship, love, and death.

In a conclusion, it can be seen that despite the criticism of the postmodernism movement as a whole, its most bright representatives put a distinct mark in the history of literature. Although in later periods postmodernism decreased in its influence on literary works, the long term made it possible to evaluate postmodernism as a phenomenon of culture and a specific direction in philosophy and literary criticism. Postmodernism absolutely consciously revised the entire literary heritage. Today it becomes an existing cultural context – a huge cultural unwritten encyclopedia, where all texts relate to each other as parts of inter-text. Our culture consists of a cultural context. The literature is a part of that cultural context in which we live. We can use these products and they are a part of that reality which we create for ourselves.

Thus, it is possible to draw a conclusion that postmodernism as the philosophical and literary system actively functioning at present, continues to remain in the center of attention of domestic and foreign authors and critics, causing brisk discussions and receiving mixed opinions.

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author”. 1977. Ubu.com. 2009. Web.

Berman, Art. Preface to Modernism. University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Bertens, Johannes Willem, Hans Bertens, and Joseph P. Natoli. Postmodernism: The Key Figures. Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Web.

Daw, Larry. “A Man Born through a Sea-Change from out of an Oyster”. 2000. The Modern World. 2009. Web.

Federman, Raymond. “Before Postmodernism and after (Part One & Two)”. Re-Vista. 2009. Web.

Love, Tim. “Allusion”. 1996. University of Cambridge. 2009. Web.

Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Postmodern Conditiona Report on Knowledge – the First Five Chapters”. 1979. Marxists.org. 2009. Web.

Mahoney, Blair. “Lost in the Barthhouse”. 2000. The Modern World. 2009. Web.

Ruch, Allen B. “Biography Libraries and Garden Labyrinths: A Dream of Childhood”. 2004. The Modern World 2009. Web.

Sullivan, Bruce A. “Totalizing Postmodernism: Master-Narratives in Pynchon’s Vineland”. 2006. The Modern World. 2009. Web.

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English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Post Modernity and Postmodernism in Literature

Mary Klages has neatly differentiated among three terms: modernity, modernism, and postmodernism to define post modernity.

Introduction : Post Modernity

Table of Contents

Mary Klages has neatly differentiated among three terms: modernity, modernism, and postmodernism to define post modernity. Regarding modernity, she suggests that it encompasses all the “ideas which influenced the artistic movement” (Klages 28) of modernism. She further asserts that modernity aims to create “order” out of “disorder,” which she identifies as centered around “rationality” and the rationalization of ideas associated with modernism. Klages derives this concept of “order” from two other concepts: Francois Lyotard’s “totality” and Derrida’s “totality,” aiming to bring modern society to stability and completeness through “grand narratives.” These grand narratives, she argues, serve to reinforce the “belief system and ideology ,” which are fundamental in establishing stability and order within a society. According to her, this period began around 1750, marked by the emergence of modernity-driven ideas such as the free market, the establishment of new American democracy, concepts like the superman and freedom of expression, evolutionary theories, and advancements in medical science, psychoanalysis, and anti-war sentiments.

Modernism and Post Modernity

Modernity, as a conceptual framework, encapsulates the pursuit of “order,” “stability,” and “totality” within societal structures. Modernism, then, manifests as the artistic and literary movement that emerges in response to the ideological underpinnings elucidated by modernity. From a literary perspective, modernism manifests through distinct attributes, including impressionism or impressionistic techniques, subjective explorations akin to the Romantic tradition, utilization of first-person narrative employing techniques like “stream of consciousness” as exemplified in James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” employment of third-person narrations as seen in the works of Ernest Hemingway, and the utilization of fragmented structures to construct cohesive poetic compositions, as evidenced in T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Moreover, modernist literature favors spontaneity and creativity over rigid formalism, thereby reflecting a departure from conventional literary norms.

The thematic undercurrent within modernist works often evokes a profound sense of melancholy or disillusionment with the prevailing state of affairs. Such sentiments serve as the artistic expressions of the tumultuous transitions and existential uncertainties brought forth by the overarching ideologies of modernity. Indeed, the emergence of modernism marks a pivotal epoch wherein novel literary forms and genres are crafted to reconcile the apparent chaos inherent in the modern condition with the human impulse towards order and coherence.

While delineating precise temporal boundaries for the modernist period proves challenging due to its fluid and multifaceted nature, scholars approximate its inception around 1910, with its zenith extending from the 1930s to the 1970s. This timeframe encapsulates the vibrant and dynamic landscape wherein modernist literature flourished, exemplifying the artistic response to the socio-cultural upheavals and existential inquiries characteristic of the modern era.

Postmodernism and Post Modernity

In delineating the transition from modernity to postmodernity, the shift from embracing “grand narratives” to the valorization of “mini-narratives” marks a fundamental departure in both philosophical and educational paradigms. Postmodernism, as a cultural and intellectual movement, signifies a rejection of overarching meta-narratives that seek to impose universal truths or ideologies, instead advocating for the recognition and validation of diverse, localized perspectives and experiences. This shift from the global to the local reverberates across various domains, including education, where functional knowledge takes precedence over the traditional dichotomy of “good” or “bad” knowledge. Functional knowledge, characterized by its emphasis on practical skills and utilitarian application, underscores the importance of experiential learning and adaptive training methodologies.

At the forefront of educational transformation in the postmodern era is the pervasive influence of digitalization, epitomized by the widespread integration of computers for the dissemination, acquisition, and storage of knowledge. The advent of digital technologies not only revolutionizes the educational landscape but also underscores the centrality of information access and technological literacy in navigating contemporary socio-cultural realities.

Furthermore, postmodernism accentuates the significance of fragmentation as a counterpoint to the grand narratives of modernity. This emphasis on fragmentation, coupled with the rejection of overarching narratives, engenders a fertile ground for the proliferation of fundamentalism, wherein localized ideologies or belief systems assert themselves in opposition to perceived global homogenization.

Within the realm of literary discourse, the postmodern ethos fosters a dynamic interplay between globalization and regionalism. The ascendancy of literary “mini-narratives” serves as a conduit for the globalization of regional voices, facilitating the dissemination and recognition of diverse cultural perspectives on a global scale. Consequently, regional writers find newfound resonance and popularity beyond their immediate geographical confines, contributing to a rich tapestry of global literary expression characterized by its plurality and heterogeneity.

Works Cited

Klages, Mary. Literary Theory: The Complete Guide . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017.

Relevant Questions about Post Modernity

How has postmodernity reshaped our understanding of truth and knowledge in various fields such as literature, art, and philosophy?
In what ways has postmodernity challenged traditional structures of power and authority, particularly in political, social, and cultural contexts?
Can we identify any emerging trends or movements within postmodernity that offer potential paths forward in navigating its complexities and contradictions?

Government’s Usage of Euphemism: Hiding Truth
“You Fit Into Me”: by Margaret Atwood
Resistance and Anger in Mahmoud Darwish
“The Eagle” and “Hawk Roosting”: Comparison

Postmodernism

We explain what postmodernism is and what its main characteristics are. In addition, we explore postmodern society and postmodern architecture.

What is postmodernism?

Postmodernism is a philosophical, cultural and artistic movement that emerged in the late 20th century as a reaction to the intellectual and philosophical ideas of modernity. It gets its name for being the school of thought following Modernism.

Postmodernism rejects the idea of an unmediated, objective reality independent of the human being , which it dismisses as naive realism. It is characterized by skepticism or rejection of the Enlightenment.

Jean-François Lyotard (1924-1998) analyzes postmodern culture in The Postmodern Condition as the end of metanarratives or "grand narratives", the main characteristic of modernity. Examples of these are reductionism and teleological interpretations of Marxism and the Enlightenment, among others.

Rather than denying the identity of what was known until then, postmodernism grounds in the concept of "difference" as productive mechanism . It argues that thought (and what compels humans to act) is a matter of sensitivity rather than reason.

See also: Existentialism

Characteristics of postmodernism

The postmodernist movement held that:

Modern Western philosophy creates dualisms. Postmodernism maintains a hybrid or pluralistic stance on reality.
Truth is a matter of perspective or context rather than something universal or absolute. This idea arises from Nietzschean perspectivism: Nietzsche states that "there are no facts, only interpretations".
Language shapes the way of thinking and there can be no thought without language. Authors like Derrida work on this idea.
Language is capable of literally creating reality. Austin's performativity elaborates a theory in this regard.

Postmodern philosophy

Postmodern philosophy emerges as a break from modernism . Though it is difficult to pinpoint the origin of postmodernism, its start can be roughly marked in the 1960s, in France. Most postmodern thinkers are also post-Nietzschean: Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari, Nancy, Barthes and Lacan, among others.

Postmodernism arises as a reaction or attempt to depart from the ideals of the previous era. Many of its authors are concerned with existentialism , deconstruction, posthumanism and contemporary literary theory. All of them break with the primacy that modernism gave to the individual and reason.

Central ideas of philosophical postmodernism are Derridean logocentrism, binary dichotomy and power relations , which are illustrated in works such as Foucault's The Order of Things , Derrida's Of Grammatology , or Deleuze and Guattari's Anti-Oedipus .

Regarding the concept of difference , various authors adopt similar though not entirely reconcilable positions.

For Derrida, there exists the concept of différance or "difference", which is the simultaneous overlap of deferral and difference. This concept first appeared in his 1967 book Of Grammatology , which discusses language and writing not as sign but as a gramma or "differentiated" inscription.
Deleuze develops the Bergsonian multiplicity as a form of difference.
For his part, Foucault treats episteme as a singularity modified by the exercise of power.
In Lyotard's case, he coined the term "dispute", asserting that it is no longer possible to legitimize the historical truth claims of the various Western philosophical systems.

Postmodern art

Postmodernism broke with the established rules in art giving way to a new era of freedom in which "anything goes" . It is inherently an anti-authoritarian movement, as it refuses to acknowledge the influence of any style.

In order to challenge the boundaries of collective taste, the postmodernist movement may acquire a humorous, ironic and even ridiculous tone . It takes an anti-dualistic stance opposed to classical preconceptions such as east and west, male and female, rich and poor or black and white.

Examples of postmodern art include minimalism, conceptual art, land-art, happenings and interventions, all of which assert the failure of avant-garde art . Postmodern artists hold that avant-gardes are nothing but a failed response to established canon, since once they make their critique and mark their artistic difference, they end up being part of canon.

Postmodern architecture

Postmodern architecture is characterized by its undefined type , which does not oppose traditional styles while managing to differentiate itself from them. It replaced modern aesthetics (unadorned and with right angles) with irregular lines and unusual surfaces.

Some examples of postmodern architecture include: the State Gallery of Stuttgart (Germany), the public square Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans (United States) and the Scottish Parliament Building in Holyrood (Scotland).

Modern architects often regard postmodern buildings as vulgar or having a populist ethic. Conversely, postmodern architects may see modern works as having soulless and bland facades.

Postmodern Literature

Postmodern literature features a style of fragmentariness, diversity, paradox, unreliable narration, parody and "black humor" . It rejects the distinction between genres and forms of writing.

Latin America literature in the 1990s experienced a trend towards postmodernism. Major figures of postmodernism include Ricardo Piglia, Diamela Eltit, Rafael Humberto Moreno-Durán, José Balza and José Emilio Pacheco.

Postmodern authors typically blur the line between fictional discourses and essays : they write fiction about literature and essays in fiction style.

Postmodern society

The development of postmodern society meant a shift from production-based to consumer economies and even to compulsive consumerism which has caused harmful consequences that can be seen today.

To counteract the negative consequences, postmodernism began to question environmental disasters caused by the overexploitation of natural resources and the amount of toxic waste generated. It called for a reappreciation of planet Earth and a rise of awareness for its care.

Criticism of postmodernism

In all the fields where postmodernism has been observed, there has been resistance and rejection of the general ideas it puts forward . Whether in architecture, art or literature, generations of artists, writers and thinkers maintain that postmodernism is the symptom of a declining society whose foundations have been lost in time.

One of the most famous examples is the book Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science , written by physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, where they highlight the relativism to which postmodernity is subject. They criticize both the abuse of scientific concepts by philosophers and the use of non-communicative language by authors like Derrida or Heidegger, who tend to write in a non-predicative playful style as a display of thought.

The philosophers and thinkers most criticized by Sokal and Bricmont are Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour and Jean Baudrillard.

Ballesteros, J. (1989). Posmodernidad: decadencia o resistencia . Tecnos.
Baudrillard, J., Habermas, J., Said, E. y otros. (2000). La posmodernidad . Kairós
Lyotard, J.-F. (2008). La condición postmoderna: Informe sobre el saber . Cátedra.
“Postmodernism”. Encyclopaedia Britannica .
“Postmodernism”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
“Postmodernism”. Literary Theory and Criticism .

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So, to conclude, postmodernism is a vast and loose term that can be applied to many different things, such as literature, art and history. Whereas Don Delillo is fascinated with the continuing escalation of modern technology and the strong influences of the media, Caryl Churchill focuses more on the gender and class oppressions that are faced ...
The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodernism
Weaving together multiple strands of postmodernism - people and places from Andy Warhol, Jefferson Airplane and magical realism, to Jean-François Lyotard, Laurie Anderson and cyberpunk - this book creates a rich picture of a complex cultural phenomenon that continues to exert an influence over our present 'post-postmodern' situation.
Postmodernism in Literature
Postmodernism is a literary genre that shares many traits with other kinds of writing. Write an essay comparing postmodernism to another genre or literary movement of your choice. Examples that ...
Post-Modernism in Literature
Postmodernism in the literature started to take a shape in the sixties and the seventies of the 20th century and, as well as modernism, promised salvation. This salvation and social release were imposed on the public in a rather aggressive way. The announcement of the death of the author, the novel, the story, and true art became the main ...
A Beginner's Guide to Writing a Postmodern English Literature Essay
Researching and Analyzing Literature. Before you begin writing your essay, it is essential to research and analyze the literature thoroughly. Take notes while reading, and explore the literary techniques used by the author. Consider how the text fits into the broader context of postmodern literature and challenges traditional literary conventions.
Post Modernity and Postmodernism in Literature
Mary Klages has neatly differentiated among three terms: modernity, modernism, and postmodernism to define post modernity. Regarding modernity, she suggests that it encompasses all the "ideas which influenced the artistic movement" (Klages 28) of modernism.
Postmodernism: what it is, criticism and characteristics
Postmodern authors typically blur the line between fictional discourses and essays: they write fiction about literature and essays in fiction style. Postmodern society The development of postmodern society meant a shift from production-based to consumer economies and even to compulsive consumerism which has caused harmful consequences that can ...
PDF English 290
the relevance of Postmodernism in our daily lives. Course Goals: • To trace the development of Postmodern literature, and to explorethe major concepts and issues presented in Postmodern literary texts. (AIL 2, WI 5) • To demonstrate the ability to critically analyze, appreciate, and make cogent subjective judgments about Postmodern literature.
Thesis and Outline for Essay Modernism or Postmodernism Template
English Literature I (ENGL 215) 140 Documents. Students shared 140 documents in this course. University Liberty University. Academic year: 2022/2023. ... THESIS AND OUTLINE FOR ESSAY: MODERNISM OR POSTMODERNISM TEMPLATE. I. First, select the 2 literary texts from Modules 5, 6, or 7 you'll be comparing and identify the topic they have in ...
Modernism Vs Postmodernism
Paper Type: Free Essay: Subject: English Literature: Wordcount: 3156 words: Published: 1st Jan 2015: Reference this Share this: Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. LinkedIn. WhatsApp ... Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern ...
Free Essay: Postmodernism in English literature
Filter Results. Postmodernism in English literature. 1. Postmodernism in the English literature of the last decades of the 20th century. 2. John Fowles's novels as an example of postmodern writing. In the 1960s the cultural layers changed and grew confused; the emergence of the mass media and the technological revolution changed the nature of ...
Frederick Crews, literary critic and steely Freud skeptic, dies at 91
Dr. Crews aired his doubts in the essay collections "Out of My System" (1975) and "Skeptical Engagements" (1986), then launched a full-fledged assault on Freudianism with a 10,000-word ...