Post-Modernism Flashcards
Post-modern novels
Uses irony and parody. Mainly a white-man genre. Somewhat misogynistic, dealt with aggressive male sexual behaviour; lots of experimentations; undertook social and cultural critique.
Kurt Vonnegut
He was a soldier stationed in Germany who experienced the bombing of Dresden - a thriving city of culture.
If good guys attack civilians, then surely something isn’t right? History is just something that we tell, and it’s told by those in power. Those who win will present black and white versions of the events.
Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut. Anti-war, unconventional novel. Divided into two parts: one about Kurt himself struggling to write the novel, the other one about a war vet being abducted by aliens and learning that time is the 4th dimension.
Two narratives brought together: unconventional, showing that history can be stranger than fiction; reality imitates fiction.
When Billy Pilgrim (the vet) is captured by Tralfamadorians he asks the question “why?” - They look at him and say - “this is such a human thing to say” - in the whole universe, only people ask this question; there is no why, we are all trapped in the moment as bugs in ember; no free will, we are manipulated by forces beyond our control.
There is no “Why”, things simply are.
Return of the naturalistic idea - impossibility of making choices. In 1960s many Americans believed the same.
Billy Pilgrim - postmodern pilgrim - pilgrims used to be on pilgrimages to the sacred places; but Billy has no destination.
“Billy Pilgrim came unstuck in time” - he revisits many moments of his life, he cannot change them, since they already happened; Billy Pilgrim - ultimate embodiment of postmodern character - listless, passive, controlled by unnameable others
Postmodern characteristics
- distrupts realist conventions; blending and mixing of genres, no rules of decorum, 4th wall breaks
- history is just a story we tell; stories we tell about the past change due to new data
- what is natural? we are all driven by forces we don’t understand
- language is not transparent - it constructs reality but is experienced as already interpreted by social constructs of what the world is
- world experienced as a text: reality is a system of codes
- experience of literary characters trying to interpret their world resembles the interpretations of the reader; we as readers do the same as the characters
- modernism is about writing, postmodernism is about reading
- writing is re-reading the fiction of predecessors
- exhaustion: all of the conventions have been used up, so what is left is a parody; a replica; no more cause-effect.
- humans find meaning, but the history is in the end meaningless and open ended; searching for coherence is the only meaning we can get
- frame breaking: characters who are a persona of the author now exist. Real and fictional worlds fuse together
- pararell realities - counter stories.
- use of allusions to cultural and literary phenomena
- plot over characters (flat characters, difficult plot)
Intertextuality - use of allusions to cultural and literary phenomena - usage of non-literary materials like visuals
Catch 22
Joseph Heller. Black Humour novel. Impossible situation; WWII in Italy - main character - Jewish American pilot - Iosarian.
There is a specific number of flight missions one has to fly before discharging; every time when he is almost at the limit, the number is raised, so he can’t let go of it. Absurdity of the situation.
Meta/self-reflective fiction
Reflects and comments on itself - alludes to techniques and conventions it uses or transgresses
Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice
John Barth, metafiction. Post-modern collection of stories; stylistic experimentations, writing concurrent with speaking.
Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov. Humbert Humbert is obsessed with a 12 year old american girl Dolores (he calls her Lolita) - preface written by fictitious editor of psychology books - it claims that the novel is a memoir of a man who died of heart attack, while awaiting trial in jail.
Humbert Humbert talks about his former life - when he was younger he fell in love with Annabel Lee who died prematurely (nod to E.A.Poe - intertextual reference, although spelled differently) and it caused such a trauma, that he became obsessed with nymphettes.
He is an English professor who stayed in mental institutions.
Lolita is a daughter of a woman he is going to marry, so that she becomes his step-daughter and he is close to her.
Ironical presentation of the cultural type of an innocent American girl. For Humbert, she represents type of an american girl who is beautiful and innocent (kind of Henry James’s Daisy). Ironical take, since she is already corrupt, and sexually aware. She is the seducer.
Snow White
Donald Barthelme. Inverts the fairy tale; discussion of different expectations and compromises the fairy tale characters make to survive in our world. Perspectives shift multiple times - Snow White, Seven Dwarves and wicked Step-mother - unreliable and subjective narrators.
