literarymovementspost

  Postmodernist Poetry Literary Movements: Postmodernism (c. 1945–present)**:** it can be seen as a response to the elitism of high modernism as well as to the horrors of World War II and also 21st century events. Postmodern literature is characterized by a disjointed, fragmented assortment of high and low culture that reflects the absence of tradition and structure in a world driven by technology and consumerism.  >> denies authority to the author, discounting his intentions and his claim to act as spokesman for a period >> contradicts the expected, often deliberately alienating the reader >> subverts its sources by parody, irony and pastiche >> denounces ethnic, gender and cultural repression >> strips context, reducing content to an austere minimum >> broods on the human condition disclosed by radical literary theory >> champions the primary, unmediated but not sensuous >> regards both art and life as fictions, sometimes mixing the two in magic realism or multiple endings >> argues that meaning is indeterminate, denying a final or preferred interpretation >> narrows the aesthetic distance, art being something to enter into or act out rather than simply admire >> fragments texts, turning them into collages or montages >> avoids the shaping power of metaphor and other literary tropes >> mixes genres with pastiche, travesty and cliché >> promotes the fluid and socially adaptable >> eschews elitist, literary language >> avoids the serious and responsible, promoting the arbitrary and playful >> accepts media images as the most accessible contemporary reality, making these the building blocks of art
 * Postmoderism style is a series of characteristically short, direct, discrete statements, unconnected by conjunctions of subordinate clauses, are stitched together less by discursive sense than by verbal repetition and counterpoint. The repetition includes devices such as alliteration and assonance.
 * For postmodernists the world exists only through their understanding of it, and the basis of that understanding is everyday language. There is no further or ultimate reality that words point to, and we fool ourselves by seeking deep spiritual meanings in art. Artists make intriguing creations by juxtaposing contemporary images and concepts, but these have no deeper significance. Contemporary American literature is much too various be called a movement.
 * Postmodernism has these four features:
 * **1. Iconoclasm:**
 * decanonizes cultural standards, previous artworks and authorities
 * **2. Groundless:**
 * employs flat, media-like images that have no reference beyond themselves
 * **3. Formlessness:**
 * repudiates modernism's preoccupation with harmony and organic form
 * **4. Populism:**
 * employs material from a wide social spectrum
 * Some of the more well known postmodern authors include: Chuck Palahniuk, Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, Margaret Atwood, William S. Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and David Foster Wallace.
 * This is an example of a postmodern poem by Margaret Atwood:

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">**<span style="font-size: 13.5pt; color: #000000; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">The Landlady ** <span style="font-size: 80%; color: maroon; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; msofareastfontfamily: 'Times New Roman'; msoansilanguage: EN-US; msofareastlanguage: EN-US; msobidilanguage: AR-SA;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;">This is the lair of the landlady She is a raw voice loose in the rooms beneath me. the continuous henyard squabble going on below thought in this house like the bicker of blood through the head. She is everywhere, intrusive as the smells that bulge in under my doorsill; she presides over my meagre eating, generates the light for eyestrain.

From her I rent my time: she slams my days like doors. Nothing is mine. and when I dream images of daring escapes through the snow I find myself walking always over a vast face which is the land- lady's, and wake up shouting. She is a bulk, a knot swollen in a space. Though I have tried to find some way around her, my senses are cluttered by perception and can't see through her. She stands there, a raucous fact blocking my way: immutable, a slab of what is real. solid as bacon.

SCAVENGER HUNT: 1. What are the [|four main features in postmodern poetry?] Name all four and one example of each. 2. When did [|postmodernism] begin? 3. What are the [|main literary ideas]of this time period? 4. Who are some of the main [|postmodernist writers]? 5. What is another [|poem name]by a writer of this time?

Amanda Crouch