Postmodern literature

ago appeared to have failed, and science had proven that it could not prove the origin of the universe, a new philosophical and artistic expression moved in to fill the void of the Modernist Movement. The Postmodern Movement was born out of a lack of faith in society and the established way of life as a whole, and embraced the philosophy of meaninglessness and a rejection of the transcendental meta-narrative. This move has been fully expressed in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in which both demonstrate a plethora of postmodern characteristics such as strategic use of allusion and irony, and clever employment of intertextuality; per contra, these similar attributes are structurally the same but…

In 419 by Will Ferguson, there are characteristics of a postmodern Canadian novel. The definition of a “Canadian novel” has changed through the literature movements. Creating moral order and controlling landscapes was used in the colonial period and then, in the confederation period that followed, there was emphasis on nationalism and defining what it was to be Canadian. Nationalism in literature was important because it was necessary for the survival of the country in order to prevent the…

arose in the mid to late 20th century and was a movement that mainly impacted the arts such as music, architecture and literature. Postmodernism arose hugely due to the events in America at the time and the failures of Modernism. Because of this, many postmodernists have a very skeptical look into elements of their society. To properly analyze Vonnegut’s unique writing style and literary choices, one must first take a look some of the basic elements of a postmodern novel of which Vonnegut’s…

It is concerned with the breaking down of known truths, systems, frameworks, certainties, and definitions. It feels that there is no singular truth or answer, and rejected the sentiments that there is one true God, history is progress or peace on Earth. Instead of one overall truth, things are understood on a micro level, ideas like reality are realized by how we see them individually. In literature, or movies in my case, this is characterized by self-referentially, moral relativism, cynicism…

The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Boston, London, Butterworth Heinemann, October 2000. Postmodernism. Web. 19 Nov 2013. <http://postmodernblog.tumblr.com/post/106532710/a-list-of-postmodern-characteristics>. Keep, C., T. McLauglin, and R. Parmar. N.p.. Web. 21 Nov 2013. <http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0242.html>. Klages, Mary. N.p.. Web. 21 Nov 2013.…

form of homage, Basho creates reflective and culturally significant poems that utilize untraditional methods such as musical literature and physical representations of respect in the form of silk strips tied at certain sanctuaries. Although religious in nature, Frow explicates the underlying purpose of his account of Basho’s pilgrimage as a precise “model of contemporary tourism-not in the sense of the basal anthropological analysis […] but in the sense that Basho sets up a relationship between…

When an author chooses to write outside of what is considered the “normal” procedure, we call this, breaking the frame. In literature, there are expectations. Postmodernists would call these expectations, “the frame.” These expectations, or rules often tell writers how they should write, what they should write about, how long their writing should be, and any other rules to limit the writer. Some have even described it as a form that is to be filled out. Rules and expectations were probably not…

Finding names is not an easy task, but based on the articles, “The Weird Science of Naming New Products” by Neal Gabler and “How’d it Get That Name” by Bob Greene, it demonstrated interesting ways on how products were named. In Gabler’s article, “The Weird Science of Naming New Products”, he explains the random process in naming a virtual reality experience. They found a man named Shore who insisted in looking for ides off a science fiction website. He looks for words such as “Jumpdoor”, “Jaunte…

Entropy and Meaning in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 In modernity, the narrative of scientific progress operates under the assumption of order and linear progress. But with the rise of postmodern theory, these assumptions begin to be called into question to provoke new scientific discourses based on indeterminacies and discontinuities. The Crying of Lot 49 poses the same questions of the possibility of scientific knowledge and the search for intrinsic meaning. Pynchon follows the…

society have no way to control chance or chaos that occurs in their lives. The two novels that help frame this concept and make it understood in literature are: The Crying of Lot 49 written by Thomas Pynchon and Cosmopolis written by Don DeLillo. These two novels formulate the idea that chance or chaos governs society and resists the ability for society to predict what is going to happen in the future. Through novels such as The Crying of Lot 49 or Cosmopolis, one has the opportunity to think…