Postmodernism

Adheres to Western Contests Western

hegemonic values hegemonic values

Focus on the writer Focus on the reader

Focus on interiority Focus on exteriority

Alienation Collective voices

Unreliable narrator Ironic narrator

Ambivalence towards
Rejection of realism
realism

Literature is open and

Literature is self-contained
intertextual

Mixing of high- and low-

High-brow genres
brow genres

Rejection of literary Parody of literary

conventions conventions

Metafictional Metafictional

Idiosyncratic language Simple language

Postmodernism, also spelled post-modernism, in Western philosophy, a late 20th-century

movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of
reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and
economic power.