POSTMODERNISM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an
area of academic study since the mid­1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a 
concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, 
architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's 
hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism
begins.

Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about postmodernism is by thinking about 
modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism
has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding 
postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly 
labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century. 
Modernism is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the 
old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In 
the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism 
literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like 
Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the 
founders of twentieth­century modernism.

From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:

1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an 
emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT 
is perceived. An example of this would be stream­of­consciousness writing.

2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third­person 
narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear­cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply­
narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.

3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in 
T.S. Eliot or E.E Cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).

4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random­seeming collages 
of different materials.

5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self­consciousness, about the production of the work of 
art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something 
constructed and consumed in particular ways.

6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of 
William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor 
of spontaneity and discovery in creation.

7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice 
of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming 
art.

Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries 
between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, 
parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and
self­consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), 
ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized 
subject.

While postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from 
modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to 
present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (The Wasteland, for instance, or
Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something 
to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that 
works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of 
modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, 
doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation,provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates 
that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just 
play with nonsense.

Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to 
clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and 
postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. 
Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural 
practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market 
capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western 
Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is 
associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam­driven motor, and 
with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late
nineteenth century until the mid­twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly 
capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. 
The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis
placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), 
associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.

the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology 
than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an 
entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach 
contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
 "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; 
"modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the 
basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label
"modern," first articulated in nineteenth­century sociology, was meant to distinguish the 
present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always 
debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is 
modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier 
every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the 
European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. 
(Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, 
and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. 

Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order 
out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more 
order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it 
will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever­increasing levels of order, 
modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as 
"disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing 
a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of 
"order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"­­modern societies 
thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes
"the other"­­defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non­white, non­
male, non­heterosexual, non­hygienic, non­rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has
to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.

In many ways, postmodern artists and theorists continue the sorts of experimentation that we 
can also find in modernist works, including the use of self­consciousness, parody, irony, 
fragmentation, generic mixing, ambiguity, simultaneity, and the breakdown between high and
low forms of expression. In this way, postmodern artistic forms can be seen as an extension 
of modernist experimentation. However, others prefer to represent the move into 
postmodernism as a more radical break, one that is a result of new ways of representing the 
world including television, film (especially after the introduction of color and sound), and the
computer. Many date postmodernity from the sixties when we witnessed the rise of 
postmodern architecture.

Some of the things that distinguish postmodern aesthetic work from modernist work are as 
follows:

1) Extreme self­reflexivity
Postmodernists tend to take this even further than the modernists but in a way that tends often
to be more playful, even irreverant (as in Lichtenstein's "Masterpiece"). This same self­
reflexivity can be found everywhere in pop culture, for example the way the Scream series of 
movies has characters debating the generic rules behind the horror film. In modernism, self­
reflexivity tended to be used by "high" artists in difficult works (eg. Picasso's painting). In 
postmodernism, self­reflexive strategies can be found in both high art and everything from 
Seinfeld to MTV. In postmodern architecture, this effect is achieved by keeping visible 
internal structures and engineering elements (pipes, support beams, building materials, etc.). 
For example, Frank Gehry's postmodern Nationale­Nederlanden Building, which plays with 
structural forms but in a decidedly humorous way (which has led to the nickname for the 
building, Fred and Ginger, since the two structures—clearly male and female—appear to be 
dancing around the corner).

2) Irony and parody
 Connected to the former point, is the tendency of postmodern artists, theorists, and culture to
be playful or parodic. (Warhol and Lichtenstein are, again, good examples.) Pop culture and 
media advertising abound with examples; indeed, shows or films will often step outside of 
mimetic representation altogether in order to parody themselves in mid­stride. 

3) A breakdown between high and low cultural forms.
 Whereas some modernists experimented with this same breakdown, even the modernists that
played with pop forms (eg. Joyce and Eliot) tended to be extremely difficult to follow in their
experimentations. Postmodernists by contrast often employ pop and mass­produced objects in
more immediately understandable ways, even if their goals are still often complex (eg. Andy 
Warhol's commentary on mass production and on the commercial aspects of "high" art 
through the exact reproduction of a set of Cambell's Soup boxes). 

4) Retro
 Postmodernists and postmodern culture tend to be especially fascinated with styles and 
fashions from the past, which they will often use completely out of their original context. 
Postmodern architects for example will juxtapose baroque, medieval, and modern elements in
the same room or building. In pop culture, think of the endlessly recycled tv shows of the past
that are then given new life on the big screen (Scooby­Doo, Charlie's Angels, and so on). 
Jameson and Baudrillard tend to read this tendency as a symptom of our loss of connection 
with historical temporality.

5) A questioning of grand narratives
Lyotard sees the breakdown of the narratives that formerly legitimized the status quo as an 
important aspect of the postmodern condition. Of course, modernists also questioned such 
traditional concepts as law, religion, subjectivity, and nationhood; what appears to distinguish
postmodernity is that such questioning is no longer particularly associated with an avant­
garde intelligentsia. Postmodern artists will employ pop and mass culture in their critiques 
and pop culture itself tends to play with traditional concepts of temporality, religion, and 
subjectivity. 

6) Visuality and the simulacrum vs. temporality
Given the predominance of visual media (tv, film, media advertising, the computer), both 
postmodern art and postmodern culture gravitate towards visual (often even two­dimensional)
forms, as in the "cartoons" of Roy Lichtenstein. A good example of this, and of the 
breakdown between "high" and "low" forms, is Art Spiegelman's Maus, a Pulitzer­prize­
winning rendition of Vladek Spiegelman's experiences in the Holocaust, which Art (his son) 
chooses to present through the medium of comics or what is now commonly referred to as the
"graphic novel." Another symptom of this tendency is a general breakdown in narrative 
linearity and temporality. Many point to the style of MTV videos as a good example. As a 
result, Baudrillard and others have argued (for example, through the notion of the 
simulacrum) that we have lost all connection to reality or history. This theory may help to 
explain why we are so fascinated with reality television. Pop culture also keeps coming back 
to the idea that the line separating reality and representation has broken down (Wag the Dog, 
Dark City, the Matrix, the Truman Show, etc.).

7) Late capitalism
There is also a general sense that the world has been so taken over by the values of capitalist 
acqusition that alternatives no longer exist. One symptom of this fear is the predominance of 
paranoia narratives in pop culture (Bladerunner, X­Files, the Matrix, Minority Report). This 
fear is, of course, aided by advancements in technology, especially surveillance technology, 
which creates the sense that we are always being watched.

8) Disorientation
MTV culture is, again, sometimes cited as an example as is postmodern architecture, which 
attempts to disorient the subject entering its space. Another example may be the popularity of
films that seek to disorient the viewer completely through the revelation of a truth that 
changes everything that came before (the Sixth Sense, the Others,Unbreakable, the Matrix).

Postmodern Culture or "Postmodernity" 
Our current period in history has been called by many the postmodern age (or 
"postmodernity") and many contemporary critics are understandably interested in making 
sense of the time in which they live. Although an admirable endeavor, such critics inevitably 
run into difficulties given the sheer complexity of living in history: we do not yet know which
elements in our culture will win out and we do not always recognize the subtle but insistent 
ways that changes in our society affect our ways of thinking and being in the world. One 
symptom of the present's complexity is just how divided critics are on the question of 
postmodern culture, with a number of critics celebrating our liberation and a number of 
others lamenting our enslavement. In order to keep clear the distinction between 
postmodernity and postmodernism, each set of modules includes an initial module on how 
each critic makes sense of our current postmodern age (or "postmodernity").

Postmodern Theory or "Postmodernism"

"Postmodernism" also refers to the aesthetic/cultural products that treat and often 
critique aspects of "postmodernity." The modules introduce some of the important concepts 
that have been introduced by postmodernist theorists to supplant or temper the values of 
traditional humanism. Given how the "postmodern" refers to our entire historical period, 
some of the theorists who have influenced postmodern theory are included not in the Modules
but in other sections of this Guide to Theory. Judith Butler's use of the concept of 
performativity has been extremely influential on postmodernism.
Postmodernism is a broad range of:

a. Responses to modernism, refusals of some of its totalizing premises and effects, and of its 
implicit of explicit distinction between ,,high,, culture and commonly lived life

b. Responses to such things as a world lived under nuclear threat and threat to the
geosphere, to a world of faster communication, mass mediated reality, greater diversity
of cultures and mores and a consequent pluralism

c. Acknowledgments of and in some senses struggles against a world in which, under a

spreading technological capitalism, all things are are commodified and fetishized (made
the object of desire), and in which genuine experience has been replaced by simulation
and spectacle

d. Reconceptualizations of society, history and the self as cultural constructs, hence as

rhetorical constructs

Postmodern literature
is literature characterised by heavy reliance on techniques like fragmentation,
paradox and questionable narrators and often is defined as a style or trend which
emerged in the post World War II Era. Postmodern works are seen asa reaction against
Enlightenment thinking and Modernist approaches to literature. Postmodern literature,
like Postmodernism as a whole is tending to resist definition or classification as a
movement. Postmodern literature is commonly defined in relation to a precursor. For
instance post-modern literary work tends not to conclude with the neatly tied - up
ending as is often found in modernist literature (Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner) but often
parodies it. Authors are trying to celebrate chance over craft. Another characteristic of
postmodern literature is the questioning of distinctions between high and low culture
through the use of pastiche, the combination of subjects and genres not previously
deemed fit for literature.

Both modern and postmodern literature represent a break from 19th century
realism. In character development both modern and postmodern literature explore
subjectivism turning from external reality to examine inner states of consciousness from
the works of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce or explorative poems like The Waste Land
by T.S Eliot. Both literatures explore fragmentariness in narrative and character
construction. Modernist literature sees fragmentation and extreme subjectivity as an
existential crisis, a problem that must be solved and the artist is often cited as the one
to solve it. Postmodernists demonstrate that the chaos is insurmountable, the artist is
impotent and the only recourse against ,,ruin,, is to play within chaos. Playfulness is
present in many modernist works and seem very similar to postmodern works but with
postmodernism playfulness becomes central and the actual achievement of order and
meaning becomes unlikely.

As with all stylistic eras, there is no definite date which tells us when was the rise
and fall of postmodernism’s popularity. As the rough boundary for the start of
postmodernism is often taken the year when Irish novelist James Joyce and English
novelist Virginia Woolf died, the year of 1941. Others argue that the beginning of
postmodern literature could be marked by significant publications or literary events. For
example the first publication of John Hawkes’ ,, The Cannibal,, in 1949, ,, Waiting for
Goddot,, in 1955, the first publication of ,,Howl,, in 1956. Although many postmodern
works have developed out of modernism, modernism is characterised by an
epistemological dominant while postmodernism are primarily concerned with questions of
ontology. Although postmodern literature doesn’t include everything written in the
postmodern period several post - war developments have significant similarities, like the
Theatre of Absurd, the Beat Generation, and Magic Realism. Or some key figures like
Samuel Beckett, William S. Burrpughs, Gabriel Marquez are cited as significant
contributors to the postmodern aesthetic.

The term Theatre of Absurd was describing a tendency in theatre in 1950s and is related
to Albert Camus’s concept of the absurd. The most important figure as both Absurdist
and postmodern is Samuel Beckett. His work is often seen as marking the shift from
modernism to postmodernism in literature. He was considered as one of the fathers of
the postmodern movement in fiction which has continued undermining the ideas of
logical coherence in narration.

The Beat Generation was the youth of America during the materialistic 1950s. It includes
several groups of post - war American writers who have occasionally been referred to as
the postmoderns. One writer more often appeared on this list of postmodern writers and
his name is William S. Burroughs. His work ,,Naked Lunch,, published in Paris in 1959
and America in 1961 is by some considered the first truly postmodern novel because it is
fragmentary with no central narrative arc, it is full of parody, paradox and playfulness.
He is also noted for the creation of the ,, cut up ,, technique in which words and phrases
are cut from a newspaper or other publication and then rearranged to form a new
message.

Magic Realism is a technique popular among Latin American writers in which

supernatural elements are treated as mundane. This technique has its roots in traditional
storytelling it was a centre piece of the Latin American boom a movement coterminous
with postmodernism. Some of the major figures of the ,,Boom,, and Magic Realism are
Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar and are sometime listed as postmodernists.

Postmodernism in literature doesn’t represent organised movement with leaders or

central figures so we cannot say if it is ended or when it will end. It reached its peak in
the 60s and 70s with the publication of some very important woks, Catch 22, Lost in the
Funhouse, Slaughterhouse Five, Gravity’s Rainbow, …

Common Themes and Techniques used in

Postmodernism

Irony, playfulness, black humour - although the idea of employing these in

literature didn’t start with the postmodernists ( the modernists were often playful and
ironic), they became central features in many postmodern works. Postmodern novelists
labeled as black humorists were John Barth, Joseph Heller, Bruce Jay Friedman.

Intertextuality - is actually the relationship between one text (a novel) and

another or one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history. Intertextuality in
postmodern literature can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an
extended discussion of a work or the adoption of a style. In postmodern literature this
manifests as references to fairy tales. example of intertextuality which influenced later
postmodernists is “Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote” by Jorge Louis Borges, a story
with significant references to Don Quixote which is also a good example of intertextuality
with its references to Medieval romances. Another examples of intertextuality in
postmodernism are The Sot - Weed Factor by John Barth, The Name of the Rose by
Umberto Eco.

Pastiche - pastiche means ,, to combine,, or ,,to paste,, together multiple

elements. In postmodernist literature this can be an homage to or a parody of past
styles. It can be a combination of multiple genres to create a unique narrative or to
comment on situations in postmodernity.

Metafiction - is writing about writing or ,, foregrounding the apparatus ,,.

Metafiction is often employed to undermine the authority of the author, to advance the
story in a unique way or to comment of the act of the storytelling.

Fabulation - is a term sometimes used interchangeably with metafiction and

relates to pastiche and Magic Realism. It is a rejection of realism which embraces the
notion that literature is a created work and not bound by notions of mimesis and
verisimilitude. Fabulation challenges some traditional notions of literature—the traditional
structure of a novel or role of the narrator, for example—and integrates other traditional
notions of storytelling, including fantastical elements, such as magic and myth, or
elements from popular genres such as science fiction. The term was coined by Robert
Scholes in his book The Fabulators.

Poioumena - Poiuomenon (plural: poioumena from Ancient Greek meaning

product, a term coined by Alastair Fowler to ever to a specific type of metafiction in
which the story is about the process of creation. It offers opportunities to explore the
boundaries of fiction and reality - the limits of narrative truth.

Temporal Distortion - a common technique in modernist fiction: fragmentation

and non-linear narratives are central features in both modern and postmodern literature.
In postmodern fiction was used in a variety of ways often for the sake of irony.

Magic Realism - may be literary work marked by the use of still, sharply
defined, smoothly painted images of figures and objects depicted in a surrealistic
manner. The themes and subjects are often imaginary, somewhat outlandish and
fantastic and with a certain dream-like quality. Some of the characteristic features of this
kind of fiction are the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or
bizarre, skillful time shifts, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots,
miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even
surrealistic description, arcane erudition, the element of surprise or abrupt shock, the
horrific and the inexplicable. Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez is also regarded
as a notable exponent of this kind of fiction—especially his novel One Hundred Years of
Sollitude.

Paranoia - The sense of paranoia or the belief that there is an ordering system
behind the chaos of the world is another recurring postmodern theme. For the
postmodernists, no ordering is extremely dependant upon the subject so paranoia often
straddles the line between delusion and brilliant insight.

Fragmentation - another important aspect of postmodern literature. Various

elements, concerning plot, characters, themes, imagery and factual references are
fragmented and dispersed throughout the entire work. In general, there is an interrupted
sequence of events, character development and action which can at first glance look
modern, it purports, however, to depict a metaphysically unfounded, chaotic universe.
Fragmentation can occur in language, sentence structure or grammar.
 Conclusion - Different perspectives

John Barth , wrote an influential essay in 1967 ,, The Literature of Exhaustion,,

where he stated about the need for the new era in literature after modernism had
exhausted itself. Many of the well - known postmodern novels deal with WWII, one of the
most famous was Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. The antiwar and anti government feelings in
the book belong to the period following the WWII. The general disintegration of belief
took place then and it affected Catch 22 in that the form of the novel almost
disintegrated. The novelist Umberto Eco explains his idea of postmodernism as a kind of
double coding and as a transhistorical phenomenon in his book ,, The Name of the
Rose,,. Barbara Cartland thinks that postmodernism is not a trend to be chronologically
defined but as a ideal category or a way of operating.

Postmodernism ... can be used at least in two ways – firstly, to give a label to the period
after 1968 and secondly to describe the highly experimental literature produced by
writers beginning with Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles in the 1960.

Examples of postmodern literature:

• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes