PS Postmodernist Literature: Chaos and Fragmentation
In this seminar, we will be taking a closer look at a literary genre which can be understood as a counter reaction to modernism: Postmodernist readers are often confronted with a very fragmented narrative structure making the text look like a pastiche (cf. Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing, 1989), which can be interpreted as a formal subversion of modernist authors’ wish to escape from chaos. In addition, we find motifs such as complete time reversal (cf. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, 1991), mental breakdown (cf. James Kelman’s The Busconductor Hines, 1984, as well as Galloway’s Trick) and extremely unsettling life conditions (cf. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, 2000) in postmodernist fiction. All of these literary elements add up to a postmodernist worldview decoding life (and its meaning) as something very unreliable, disordered and inaccessible. By analysing the aforementioned novels in some depth, we will be aiming at structuring the chaotic world of postmodernism. If you wish to take part in this class, please obtain and read the novels beforehand.
Pls sign up for this class asap as we will have to organise the times and topics of the oral presentations before the seminar starts. Thank you.
In this seminar, we will be taking a closer look at a literary genre which can be understood as a counter reaction to modernism: Postmodernist readers are often confronted with a very fragmented narrative structure making the text look like a pastiche (cf. Janice Galloway’s The Trick is to Keep Breathing, 1989), which can be interpreted as a formal subversion of modernist authors’ wish to escape from chaos. In addition, we find motifs such as complete time reversal (cf. Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow, 1991), mental breakdown (cf. James Kelman’s The Busconductor Hines, 1984, as well as Galloway’s Trick) and extremely unsettling life conditions (cf. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, 2000) in postmodernist fiction. All of these literary elements add up to a postmodernist worldview decoding life (and its meaning) as something very unreliable, disordered and inaccessible. By analysing the aforementioned novels in some depth, we will be aiming at structuring the chaotic world of postmodernism. If you wish to take part in this class, please obtain and read the novels beforehand.
Pls sign up for this class asap as we will have to organise the times and topics of the oral presentations before the seminar starts. Thank you.
- Moderator/in: Mario Ebest
- Moderator/in: Carmen Zink