COMMON THEMES AND TECHNIQUES

IRONY, PLAYFULNESS, BLACK HUMOR

 Treating serious subjects in a playful and humorous way

 Pokes fun at everything serious, even death
 Lightens heavy concepts such as crime, crisis, mortality
 You’ll find yourself cracking, laughing up at things you’re not supposed to make fun of

EXAMPLE: Death at a Funeral

Synopsis of the plot:

Preparing for a funeral is never pleasant, but for Aaron, it is shaping up to be the worst
day of his life. Sibling rivalry, meddling the family members, and a little stranger with a big secret
threaten to blow the lid off the coffin when Aaron struggles to give his late father’s proper
memorial.

INTERTEXTUALITY

 Acknowledgement of previous literary works in a story

 Connections between texts, including the various ways in which one text references
another
 For postmodernist, no texts exist in isolation and that works of literature can totally be
created using stuff that already exists

EXAMPLE: Robin Hood and The Aristocrats

Robin Hood and The Jungle Book

The Sword in the stone and The Jungle Book

The truth about mother goose and The Sword in the stone

The Jungle Book and The many adventures of Winnie the pooh

Beauty and the beast and Sleeping beauty

PASTICHE

 Combine or paste together multiple elements

 Combination of multiple genres/elements/styles of literature
 Imitates other texts or genres
  Purpose is not to mock but a way of paying respect, or honor, to great works of the past

Examples: Your Face Sounds Familiar

PARODY

 A work that mimics in absurd or ridiculous way the conventions and style of another work
 Purpose is to derive ridicule, iconic moment of affectionate fun

EXAMPLES: La MonaliBean

Superhero movie

The Starving Games

METAFICTION

 The prefix meta means beyond or transcending; thus the term metafiction literally
means “beyond fiction”
 It’s a device that forces the reader to confront the differences between reality and
fiction/fantasy, the line between what’s real and what pretends to be
 Characteristics:
In metafiction authors often break out of the narrative to address the nature of what they
are doing in the novel
Intrusions in the narrative to comment on the writing
Involvement of the author with the fictional characters
“directly addressing the reader”
“openly questioning how narrative assumptions and conventions transform and
filter reality…”

EXAMPLE: W Two Worlds

Bedtime Stories

MAGIC REALISM

 Fairy tales are not magical realism. Neither are horror stories, ghost stories, science
fiction, dystopian fiction, paranormal fiction, absurdist literature, and sword and sorcery
fantasy. It’s not about space explorers or wizards; Star wars and Harry Potter are not
examples of the approach
 Characteristics:
Situations and Events that defy logic
 Distorted time and sequence- characters may move backward, leap forward, or
zigzag between the past and the future; Sudden shifts in narrative
Real World Settings- Despite the extraordinary events in their lives, the
characters are ordinary people who live in recognizable places.
Matter-of-Fact Tone- Characters do not question surreal situations they find themselves
in

Examples: Life of Pi

Love at the Time of Cholera

TEMPORAL DISTORTION

 Time is the foundation of narrative

 Removal of the traditional narrative timeline constraints
 Also allows for historical characters to be inserted into new timelines for comedic effects
 Uses nonlinear timeline (foreshadowing and flashback)
 Author manipulates time

Examples: I am Legend

TECHNOCULTURE AND HYPERREALITY

 Technoculture is more of a neologism which doesn’t appear in dictionaries, but as a

postmodern trend theorist Frederick Jameson calls it a culture of the “Postindustrial
age”, where society has moved past the industrial age or is “consumer society, media
society, information society, electronic society or high tech and the like”

Examples: The Matrics

PARANOIA

 People thought someone was out to get them

 ‘plot’ is that of a secret plan or conspiracy to accomplish a criminal or illegal purpose.
The protagonist of the postmodernist novel sometimes suspects that he or she is
trapped at the center of an intrigue, often with some justification

Examples: The Boy

Gun Girl

Leonora Maria Theresa

Shutter Island
MAXIMALISM

 Denotes fictional works, particularly novels that are usually long and complex, are
digressive in style, and make use of a wide array of literary devices and techniques
 Maximalist works submerge readers with informational deluges, utilizing a variety of
subject material and literary techniques and genres to maintain attention
 Lengthy, detailed, too many themes and plots

Examples: Ang Probinsyano

The Avengers

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

MINIMALISM

 Denotes short works of fiction that combine a terse style and deliberate economy of
means with ordinary, even mundane subject matter
 Focused on a surface description where readers are expected to take an active role in
creation of story