Throughout the history of man, human beings impose form and order on all aspects of life in order to reassure themselves there is a grand design behind life’s seeming uncertainty. Evidence of this desire are social constructions such as religion and time. However, the strong need to understand the word through concrete systems is also seen in smaller details of daily life, such as fiction novels. The average person enjoys realistic fiction, or fiction that mirrors what one perceives as the “the human experience.” One method that fiction uses to enforce this desired reality is the use of a single overarching storyline, or metanarrative. The era of Postmodernism upended this notion that a novel should only have one grand metanarrative, and this upending is based in a reality closer to one’s lifespan where experiences are not singular or linear, but an amalgam of events and memories which overlap, shift priorities, and transcend strict chronological time. Two Postmodern novels that challenge the concept of a single metanarrative by including various micronarratives, employed to confuse what story takes precedence over the other, are Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. Nabokov employs the concept of intertextual conversation between different sections of the book in Pale Fire while Calvino makes use of the reader’s self-awareness of their role as an active participant in the reading of If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler to
It seems every few decades the literary ground shifts. Romanticism and Realism dominated the latter 18th century well into the 19th century. Next came Modernism, arising in the 1900s. Soon after, postmodernism took stage in the 1950s. Now into the 2000s, authors have performed remarkable feats of literary creativity and diversity. Authors are evoking occurrences from the turn of the millennium—events and conflicts that are specific to the twenty-first century. The new forms, tropes and theoretical strategies in current literature have got literary critics asking: is there such thing as twenty-first-century fiction—a new type of novel that separates itself from the modernist and postmodernist novel in terms of themes, styles, and characteristics? This paper reviews ten scholarly sources that argue for and show examples of the emergence of the new literary movement of this century. This literature review can be used by scholars interested in the next step in literature theory and how it is being defined and debated among philosophers and critics.
What about literature entices individuals to read, and to pursue a further understanding of the writing material? Surprisingly, it lies in the fact that literature creates a solid connection between readers and relatable personal experiences. With literature, readers transcend their own physical lives, and for the duration of the story, experience someone else’s emotions, and realities, as if it were their own. One person known for discussing the importance of “human connection” (Llosa, 2001), is Mario Vargas Llosa, a famous Peruvian writer. He deems that in order for literature to gain substantiality and longevity, it must first create strong connections with its readers. In the three works Until Gwen, A&P, and Winter’s Bone, the primary goal of human connection as emphasized by Llosa is largely attained through experience.
Brick and mortar institutions become more irrelevant with time. Individuals that are ideologically motivated hasten the inevitable collapse of burdensome businesses that don’t put people first. The difficulty is when distorted senses of ‘justice’ lead to dynamics that repress free speech. Decumbent yet forceful leadership in businesses and governments leads to a great many problems; humans have a dualistic nature, and to ignore the potential for unforeseeable consequences is reckless. Postmodernist critiques may be written in an attempt to help make the criminal justice system better; here again, many suitable word associations that are interesting can be declared as both good and correct in a sense that is not at all sanctimonious.
Ever since the first day of class, one theme remained constant throughout the semester- “the dangers of a single story.” Standing tall at the top of the syllabus, I knew that this phrase would become something more than words. That night we all watched a video where we were introduced and barely scratched the surface of a different way to perceive the world. Looking back, through this class, I gained a new sense of global awareness from the myriad of texts; each of which built upon previous texts to help shed light on issues in different ways. Arguing many of the same issues, the texts approached their arguments in different ways, which served to ensure that we did not face “the dangers of a single story.” In particular Louis Owen’s “Burning the Shelter” and Robin Kimmerer’s “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” display this relationship ultimately leading the reader to develop a superior understanding of the world.
Despite being infinitely apart in time, distance, and culture these two novels hold several common themes and motifs that make readers sometimes wonder if there is even a difference
In short, Hillary Clinton was the Postmodern candidate, while Donald Trump was the Metamodern candidate; and with Trumps electoral college win, we now have confirmation of this transformation from a Postmodern culture to a Metamodern culture.
I will also explore the form and structure used and give a personal response which will include some commentary about the novels in terms of their social/historical and literary contexts. People's behaviour in social roles makes possible the
Postmodernity has changed the way that advertising works, this has altered the sociological structure of branding. Branding is about building a relationship with customers to change their psychological view of their business. If a brand is produced and executed properly they are very powerful, a brand can carry a spiritual passion that attracts and glues a group of people in the community. A brand like this builds a relationship and culture with its customers, but when society views changed from modernism to postmodernism this shook the structure of brand identity. There was a shift in the demographics of their customers, instead of a company just being a business that customers buy from, the customers have become “stakeholders” in the
When entering this unit of postmodernism, my only thoughts were of a reluctant nature. I pessimistically expected only disagreement and frustration from reading the works of Life of Pi, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Fidelity. However, my initial expectations were completely and thankfully wrecked. Though the philosophies of both Martel and Nafisi contradict my own, there are endless gems of insight to be plundered from their writings. These postmodern works emphasize where we as humans find our identity and how religion plays into that identity. Contrary to my presumptions, I learned so much from reading these novels woven with postmodernists thought and can say with confidence that I am a better and more educated person for having read them.
Post-Modernism is a revolutionary era that follows Modernism and developed in mid to late twentieth century. It takes a changed and developed approach across philosophy, art, criticism, and architecture and makes a departure from Modernism. The term Postmodernism is applied to an era that both follows modernity, and also acts as a host of movements that emerged during the era especially in art, music, and literature, marked by the tendencies against modernism. It is more like the ‘rejection of conventional social norms’, followed by the ‘Counter-culture’ movement. ‘Counter-culture’ movement spreads massively in Europe and North America during mid 20th century, which is a subculture whose norms of behavior and values substantially differ from those of dominant mainstream society and culture. Its 1960’s to 1970”s development generated a unique brand of its own in the field of notable literature, including comics and cartoons.
Hassrad and Cox (2013) sought to create a model that modernizes and adapts the Burrell and Morgan’s model to unpack the meta-theoretical assumptions of the paradigm not accounted for – post-structuralism, and more broadly, post modernism. This section will briefly discuss each of Burrell and Morgan’s original criteria in relation to the literature on third-order analysis to justify the use of this modification. Hassard and Cox see three main approaches to organizational theorizing, structural, anti-structural and post-structural. Hassard and Cox (2013) also make notable adaptations to the understanding of paradigms by rethinking them as less insulated and static and allow for significant ambiguity and contradiction. Finally, Hassard and Cox also modernize the existing paradigmatic structure by updating terminology for several concepts, namely, replacing nomothetic with deductive, idiographic with interpretive and anti-positivist with constructionist, in order to offer more accessible or contemporary terms. These dimensions remain intact in terms of their definition in the original Burrell and Morgan model.
Class has always been one of the leading concerns for sociologists in different time periods as they would argue of ways of defining classes and its structure. Two traditional sociologists; Marx and Weber defined class differently. Marx said that class exists due to the economic disparities between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. On the other hand, Weber defined class as being the opportunities and life chances available to people. However, both agree that there is a proper hierarchy that defined groups as being class. (Bradley 2016:75-77) With the idea of Postmodernity, Many sociologists often question whether or not social change does affect the stability of a class. Therefore, as a start in this essay, I would like to clarify the definition of stable identities in relations to class; to be having a permanent and robust characteristic as to how it should be structured making it very clear to distinguish one class from the other. Following the explanation, I would argue that it is to a greater extent that the social changes shifting from industrialization to post-modernity has brought an end to stable class identities where it is becoming uncertain and ever-changing. There are two main reasons as to how social changes affect the stabilization of class formations in a postmodern society Firstly, the growth of consumerist culture and technology makes a class to be much more fluid rather than definitive. Lastly, the
It is also known that postmodernism addresses many cultural issues that were not seen as issues before. Modernism is set in its roots within a patriarchal and racist culture dominated by white heterosexual men (Palmer, 2018). There are many things that have come with postmodernism, like many different types of equal rights and cultural identity. However, many of these have also come up in a post-postmodernism culture, which seems to follow the events of 9/11 in 2001.
Whereas the interpreter is obliged to go to the depth of things, like an excavator, the moment of interpretation [genealogy] is like an overview, from higher and higher up, which allows the depth to be laid out in front of him in a more and more profound visibility; depth is resituated as an absolutely superficial secret.(18)
It can be argued that the survival and cooperation of human civilisation have relied upon societies adopting a persistent and coherent understanding of how the world ought to work. For these ideas to flourish, it was necessary for society to accept these perceptions of the world they lived in as the undeniable truth. However, during the twentieth century, the majority of these unshakeable truths were revealed to be problematic, or at the very least, not an absolute given, such as Christianity, scientific reason (Hanna, 38) and the European superiority that was used to justify colonialism (Israel in Bradshaw & Dettmar 124). This lead to the movement that has been referred to by scholars as modernism. Thus modernists made the attempt to invent new styles of literature that focused on characters, subjective personal experience (Hanna 77). This was done to demonstrate “the realization that modern life is not natural, but is historically constructed and continually undergoing transformations” (Walz, 10). However, whilst these new techniques displayed a sense of uncertainty in the understanding of how the world works there was still a lingering expectation that there had to be some overarching truth. It just had to be discovered. However, postmodernism completely disintegrated this perception. This essay will examine the concept of grand narratives and how they have been implemented in the past. Additionally, this will result in demonstrating how and why postmodern text deconstructs grand narratives. In order to do this, this essay will present two postmodern texts: the film Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino and the novel Sexting The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson. Thus, showing how these two texts use postmodern techniques to deconstruct grand narratives. Particularly, how they deconstruct the perception of time.