7/23/2019 A List of Postmodern Characteristics

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A list of postmodern characteristics.

Irony, playfulness, black humor Postmodern authors were certainly not the first to use irony and humor in their writing,but for many postmodern authors, these became the hallmarks of their style.

Postmodern authors will often treat very serious subjects—World War II, the Cold War,conspiracy theories—from a position of distance and disconnect, and will choose todepict their histories ironically and humorously.

Pasticheany postmodern authors combined, or !pasted" elements of previous genres andstyles of literature to create a new narrative voice, or to comment on the writing of theircontemporaries. #homas Pynchon, one of the most important postmodern authors, useselements from detective fiction, science fiction, and war fiction, songs, pop culturereferences, and well$known, obscure, and fictional history.

Intertextuality

 %n important element of postmodernism is its acknowledgment of previous literaryworks. #he interte&tuality of certain works of postmodern fiction, the dependence onliterature that has been created earlier, attempts to comment on the situation in whichboth literature and society found themselves in the second half of the '(th century)living, working, and creating on the backs of those that had come before.

Metafictionany postmodern authors feature metafiction in their writing, which, essentially, iswriting about writing, an attempt to make the reader aware of its ficitionality, and,

sometimes, the presence of the author. %uthors sometimes use this techni*ue to allowfor flagrant shifts in narrative, impossible jumps in time, or to maintain emotionaldistance as a narrator.

Historiographic metafiction#his term was created by +inda utcheon to refer to novels that fictionali-e actualhistorical events and characters) #homas Pynchons ason and /i&on, for e&ample,features a scene in which 0eorge Washington smokes pot.

Temporal distortion#emporal distortion is a literary techni*ue that uses a nonlinear timeline1 the author may

 jump forwards or backwards in time, or there may be cultural and historical referencesthat do not fit) %braham +incoln uses a telephone in Ishmael 2eeds 3light to Canada.#his techni*ue is fre*uently used in literature, but it has become even more common infilms.

Paranoiaany postmodern authors write under the assumption that modern society cannot bee&plained or understood. 3rom that point of view, any apparent connections orcontrolling influences on the chaos of society would be very frightening, and this lends asense of paranoia to many postmodern works.

Maximalism4illified by its critics for being in turns disorgani-ed, sprawling, overly long, andemotionally disconnected, ma&imalism e&ists in the tradition of long works like #he5dyssey. %uthors that use this techni*ue will sometimes defend their work as being aslong as it needs to be, depending on the subject material that is covered.

7/23/2019 A List of Postmodern Characteristics

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Faction3action is very similar to historiographic metafiction, in that its subject material is basedon actual events, but writers of faction tend to blur the line between fact and fiction tothe degree that it is almost impossible to know the difference between the two, asopposed to metafiction, which often draws attention to the fact that it is not true.

Magical realism %rguably the most important postmodern techni*ue, magical realism is the introductionof fantastic or impossible elements into a narrative that is otherwise normal. agicalrealist novels may include dreams taking place during normal life, the return ofpreviously deceased characters, e&tremely complicated plots, wild shifts in time, andmyths and fairy tales becoming part of the narrative. any critics argue that magicalrealism has its roots in the work of 6orge +uis 7orges and 0abriel 0arc8a 9r*ue-, two:outh %merican writers, and some have classified it as a +atin %merican style.

Participation

any postmodern authors, as a response to modernism, which fre*uently set itsauthors apart from their readers, attempt to involve the reader as much as possible over the course of a novel. #his can take the form of asking the reader *uestions, includingunwritten narratives that must be constructed by the reader, or allowing the reader tomake decisions regarding the course of the narrative.