Postmodern Literature Flashcards
Grade 12 · English · Flashcards
Key terms, authors, and concepts for mastering postmodern literary analysis.
Flashcards
- Metafiction
- Fiction that self-consciously reflects on its own fictional nature; e.g., a narrator who tells readers they are reading a novel.
- Intertextuality
- The way a text is shaped by, responds to, or transforms other texts through allusion, quotation, or parody.
- Unreliable Narrator
- A narrator whose account is compromised by bias, limited knowledge, or deception, forcing readers to read between the lines.
- Pastiche
- Imitation of another style or multiple styles without satirical intent—a hallmark postmodern mode of composition.
- Hyperreality (Baudrillard)
- A condition where simulations and media representations replace and become more 'real' than original reality.
- Deconstruction (Derrida)
- A method of critical analysis that exposes contradictions and instabilities in texts, showing that meaning is never fixed or unified.
- Grand Narrative (Lyotard)
- An overarching explanatory framework (science, religion, progress); postmodernism rejects these as ideological constructs.
- Fragmentation
- The deliberate use of disconnected narrative pieces, incomplete stories, or contradictory accounts to mirror the incoherence of contemporary experience.
- The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon)
- 1966 novel following Oedipa Maas investigating a mysterious mail conspiracy; exemplifies paranoia, entropy, and interpretive indeterminacy.
- White Noise (DeLillo)
- 1985 novel depicting an American family's immersion in media, consumerism, and fear of death; won the National Book Award.
- Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut)
- 1969 anti-war novel using non-linear time travel (Billy Pilgrim) and dark humor to represent the Dresden bombing and trauma.
- Death of the Author (Barthes)
- 1967 essay arguing that the author's intentions should not constrain interpretation; meaning arises from the reader's engagement with the text.
- Magical Realism vs. Postmodernism
- Magical realism blends fantastical elements into a realistic world naturally; postmodernism questions whether any stable reality exists at all.
- Postcolonial Postmodernism
- Works by authors like Salman Rushdie (*Midnight's Children*) that use postmodern techniques to challenge colonial grand narratives and construct hybrid identities.
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