Timeline - Overview - Post-modernism
Outgrowth of modernism
Postmodernism can be seen as the outgrowth of modernism. While modernism rejects notions such as plot and character, postmodernism subverts the conventions of narrative altogether; narrators in postmodern literature are often unreliable and the texts are more concerned with exploring perception or point of view than trying to represent 'truth'. For this reason, many postmodern writers employ multiple narrators, juxtaposing different views of the same event, making the reader work to establish the veracity of the narrative.
Postcolonialism
One of the key movements within postmodernist literature is that of postcolonialism. The colonial period was marked by a very Western centred cultural hegemony; until the late C20th schoolchildren in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Caribbean studied a 'canon' of literature dominated by 'dead white males' such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Dickens. In this way an imperial world view was perpetuated as students across the globe studied contexts as alien as Tudor England, the Lake District and Victorian London but not their own environments or cultural histories. Following the break up of the British Empire and the subsequent independence of former colonies, many writers began to challenge this cultural hegemony. The phrase 'the Empire writes back' (an intertextual pun on title the Star Wars sequel) was borne as postcolonial writers published narratives that celebrated their cultural background, interrogated colonial values and attempted to rewrite history from the perspective of marginalised and oppressed peoples. One such example is Jean Rhys' 1966 novella Wide Sargasso Sea which acts as the prequel to Jane Eyre, retelling the events of that canonical text from the perspective of Bertha Mason, the first wife of Mr Rochester, denounced as the 'madwoman in the attic' in Bronte's novel; by giving Bertha, who is foreign and therefore an outsider, her own voice, Rhys draws attention to the imperial and patriarchal values of the original text.
- Fragmentary form – eclectic and collaged
- Cross-genre and multi-genre
- Allusive
- Addressing issues of style and form
- Considering varieties of forms of language
- Using stories within stories
- Playing with – and concerned with issues about – time
- Looking at themes to do with memory, identity and community
- Open endings
- Multiple endings
the narrative often draws attention to itself, reminding the reader that it is an artificial construct, not to be taken too seriously.
Death of the Author
Magic Realism
Self-Referential / meta-fiction
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| Postmodern literature | ||
| Postcolonial fiction | ||
| Magic realism | ||
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| Postmodern film | ||
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