Postmodern American

Literature

By: Kaylee, Chisa, Andrea, and Carina

First, We Need to Understand Modernism...

Definition: Techniques:
● The exploration of industrial-age, real-life ● Fragmentation, intertextuality,
issues, and combines a rejection of the past unreliable narrator, parody, dark humor
● Breaking the classical and traditional forms and paradox
of literature
Example:
Focus: ● The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
● Inner self and consciousness were
predominant
...To Understand Postmodernism

Definition:
● A kind of fiction that can be absurd and
strange to the extent where a story may not
exist within a book and the characters may be
represented not as people

Focus:
● Multiple meaning within a single literary work
or complete lack of meaning
Postmodernism characteristics: Postmodern authors tend to...
● irony ● reject outright meanings in their novels, stories
● metafiction and poems
● pastiche ● highlight the possibility of multiple meanings, or
● hyper reality a complete lack of meaning, within a single
● unreliable narration literary work
● intertextuality ● make comparisons between the world we live in
● magical realism currently and the past
● unpredictability ● break the fourth wall (addressing the readers)
● distortion of time
● themes of paranoia
● self-reflexivity
● fragmentation
● historical and political themes
What are some examples?

Literature: Films:
- Perfume
- Blade Runner
- Slaughterhouse-Five
- Pulp Fiction
Famous Postmodern Authors:
- Eternal Sunshine of the
- Haruki Murakami Spotless Mind
- Margaret Atwood
- Kurt Vonnegut - The Matrix
Game Time!
 Go to kahoot.it

https://play.kahoot.it/v2/lobby?quizId=539a7664-7383-434d-bb32-6eb74202679f
Passage #1: Othello

You will get

5 minutes t
Othello o make this
post-moder
This fellow’s of exceeding honesty, n.
And knows all <qualities> with a learned spirit
Of human dealings. If I do prove her haggard,
Though that her jesses were my dear heartstrings,
I’d whistle her off and let her down the wind
To prey at fortune. Haply, for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation p of three.
n a grou
That chambers have, or inclined for I am declined Work i
Into the valves of my years—yet that’s not much—
She’s gone, I am abused , and my relief must loathe her. O curse this marriage,
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites!
(Shakespeare 135)
Passage #2: War Horse is post-modern
.
tes to make th
You will get 5 minu

But the moment we docked the mood changed. The horses recovered their composure with solid still land under their hooves
once more, but the troopers fell silent and somber as we walked past unending lines of wounded waiting to board the ship
back to England. As we disembarked and were led away along the quayside Captain Nichols walked by my head turning his
eyes out to sea so that no one should notice the tears in them. The wounded were everywhere — on stretchers, on crutches, in
open ambulances, and etched on every man was the look of wretched misery and pain. They tried to put a brave face on it, but
even the jokes and quips they shouted out as we passed were heavy with gloom and sarcasm. No sergeant major, no enemy
barrage could have silence a body of soldiers as effectively as that terrible sight, for here for the first time the men saw for
themselves the kind of war they were going into and there was not a single man in the squadron who seemed prepared for it.

(Morpurgo 47-48)

Work in a grou
p of three.
Any questions?