POSTMODERNISM

Postmodern literature is a type of literature that came to prominence after World War II. Learn about how
postmodernism in literature rejects many literary conventions and embraces new ones in this lesson. Then,
test your knowledge with a quiz.

Postmodern Literature Defined

Postmodern literature is a form of literature which is marked, both stylistically and ideologically, by a
reliance on such literary conventions as fragmentation, paradox, unreliable narrators, often unrealistic and
downright impossible plots, games, parody, paranoia, dark humor and authorial self-reference.
Postmodern authors tend to reject outright meanings in their novels, stories and poems, and, instead,
highlight and celebrate the possibility of multiple meanings, or a complete lack of meaning, within a single
literary work.
Postmodern literature also often rejects the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' forms of art and literature,
as well as the distinctions between different genres and forms of writing and storytelling. Here are some
examples of stylistic techniques that are often used in postmodern literature:

Pastiche: The taking of various ideas from previous writings and literary styles and pasting them
together to make new styles.

Intertextuality: The acknowledgment of previous literary works within another literary work.

Metafiction: The act of writing about writing or making readers aware of the fictional nature of the
very fiction they're reading.

Temporal Distortion: The use of non-linear timelines and narrative techniques in a story.

Minimalism: The use of characters and events which are decidedly common and non-exceptional
characters.

Maximalism: Disorganized, lengthy, highly detailed writing.

Magical Realism: The introduction of impossible or unrealistic events into a narrative that is
otherwise realistic.

Faction: The mixing of actual historical events with fictional events without clearly defining what is
factual and what is fictional.

Reader Involvement: Often through direct address to the reader and the open acknowledgment of
the fictional nature of the events being described.

Many critics and scholars find it best to define postmodern literature against the popular literary style that
came before it: modernism. In many ways, postmodern literary styles and ideas serve to dispute, reverse,
mock and reject the principles of modernist literature.
For example, instead of following the standard modernist literary quest for meaning in a chaotic world,
postmodern literature tends to eschew, often playfully, the very possibility of meaning. The postmodern
novel, story or poem is often presented as a parody of the modernist literary quest for meaning. Thomas
Pynchon's postmodern novel The Crying of Lot 49 is a perfect example of this. In this novel, the
protagonist's quest for knowledge and understanding results ultimately in confusion and the lack of any sort
of clear understanding of the events that transpired.

Postmodern Philosophy
Postmodern literature serves as a reaction to the supposed stylistic and ideological limitations of modernist
literature and the radical changes the world underwent after the end of World War II. While modernist
literary writers often depicted the world as fragmented, troubled and on the edge of disaster, which is best
displayed in the stories and novels of such modernist authors as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Gertrude Stein, Albert Camus, Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann, postmodern authors tend to depict the
world as having already undergone countless disasters and being beyond redemption or understanding.
For many postmodern writers, the various disasters that occurred in the last half of the 20th century left a
number of writers with a profound sense of paranoia. They also gave them an awareness of the possibility
of utter disaster and apocalypse on the horizon. The notion of locating precise meanings and reasons
behind any event became seen as impossible.
Postmodern literary writers have also been greatly influenced by various movements and ideas taken from
postmodern philosophy. Postmodern philosophy tends to conceptualize the world as being impossible to
strictly define or understand. Postmodern philosophy argues that knowledge and facts are always relative
to particular situations and that it's both futile and impossible to attempt to locate any precise meaning to
any idea, concept or event.
Postmodern philosophy tends to renounce the possibility of 'grand narratives' and, instead, argues that all
belief systems and ideologies are developed for the express purpose of controlling others and maintaining
particular political and social systems. The postmodern philosophical perspective is pretty cynical and takes
nothing that is presented at face value or as being legitimate.
Similarly, at the core of many postmodern literary writer's imaginations is a belief that the world has already
fallen apart and that actual, singular meaning is impossible to locate (if it can be said to exist at all), and
that literature, instead, should serve to reveal the world's absurdities, countless paradoxes and ironies.

Examples of Postmodern Literature

Postmodern literary writers come from all across the world. Postmodern literature is not specific to writers
from any particular region or culture. There are thousands of writers and literary works from all around the

world which are considered postmodern by critics and scholars. Among the most famous and critically
respected works of postmodern literature include the following:
1. Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow
2. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities
3. Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire
4. David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
5. Don DeLillo's White Noise
6. Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho
7. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
8. Margret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale
9. Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones
10. Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy
11. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude
All of these literary works are remarkably different from each other in style, ideology and plot. However,
they all play with various postmodern conventions and either reject, mock or completely re-work previous
styles of literary writing. Furthermore, they all embrace some aspect of the postmodern worldview that
nothing is absolute or inherently true.
Some literary critics and scholars have complained that postmodern literature, as a genre of writing, is
male-dominated. Critics and scholars tend to recognize very few female writers as postmodernists.
Furthermore, some critics and scholars argue that postmodern literary styles - as divergent and unique as
they may be - are showy, over complicated, lacking in any firm moral vision, too self-conscious and lacking
in seriousness.
In fact, many writers - some of whom are considered to be postmodern - reject the very concept of
postmodern writing or at least the label of postmodern. After all, if postmodern writing and philosophy
ultimately rejects the idea of absolute meaning, how can such a concept have an absolute definition or
name associated with it?

Lesson Summary
The styles and ideologies of postmodern literature have had a tremendous influence on contemporary
literature, visual art, film, science, history and journalism. The styles and techniques of postmodern

authors has had a tremendous influence on popular culture all over the world. All of these storytelling
devices were first used by postmodern literary writers and were adopted by film and television makers.
Postmodern literature has also radically challenged the ways in which literature is understood. Postmodern
literature has altered the ways in which we classify what is and is not literature. Before the rise of
postmodernism in literature, literature was defined by most critics and scholars as high-brow, serious
writing. Postmodern literature, though, has rejected the notion that literature has to be serious and highbrow in order to be literary. Today, many critics and scholars accept artistic works which were once
considered to be low-brow or merely entertaining as legitimate works of art and literature, such as popular
music, comic books and television.