Postmodern literature

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The postmodern literature refers to a flow or genus-specific form. The term itself originated in the late 1950s, but has not been given a more precise definition. One reason for the lack of definition in postmodern literature is its recourse to modernity .

history

The expression postmodern can be traced back to 1870. In 1959, the American literary scholar Irving Howe pointed out the low innovative capacity of contemporary literature at the time in relation to the preceding modernity and described it as post modern . Other early theorists were the sociologist Charles Wright Mills and Charles Percy Snow . Leslie Fiedler considered the claims of literary modernism to have failed and saw the birth of postmodernism in the mixing of high-level literature and mass culture, which gave the lack of innovation a positive connotation. In 1975 the term was transferred to architecture . Then the term was also used in philosophy . The French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard published the work La Condition postmoderne in 1979 . The concept of postmodernism found its origin in the works of French theorists such as Jacques Lacan , Roland Barthes , Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida .

features

In contrast to Classical Modernism , which sought a renewal of literature, the game with literary tradition predominates in postmodernism. The aim of this game is to undermine the pressure to innovate and originality of art. To do this, the postmodern writer makes use of numerous design elements as they were developed in Classical Modernism or existed before, for example intertextuality , metafictionality and stylistic devices such as pastiches , quotations or collages .

Ultimately, this should create an “aesthetic pluralism”. As a result, Martin Klepper judges: "Postmodernism remains eclectic ". An epigonality is avoided with the help of irony .

Representative of postmodern literature

Novels
Poetry
Dramas

literature

  • Wrong documents. Postmodern Texts from the USA , ed. by Utz Riese, Reclam, Leipzig 1993.
  • Ways out of modernity: key texts of the postmodern discussion , ed. by Wolfgang Welsch, Academy, Berlin 1994.
  • Uwe Wittstock: novel or life. Postmodernism in German literature. Reclam, Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-379-01516-4 .
  • Reinhard Kacianka (Ed.): Crisis and Critique of Language. Literature between late modern and post modern. Francke, Tübingen u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7720-8055-3 .
  • Herbert Grabes: Introduction to the literature and art of the modern and postmodern. The aesthetics of the foreign. Francke, Tübingen u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-8252-2611-5 (UTB), ISBN 3-7720-3361-X .
  • Michaela Kopp-Marx : Between Petrarch and Madonna. The postmodern novel. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52968-2 .
  • Klaus Birnstiel, Erik Schilling (ed.): Literature and theory since postmodernism. With an afterword by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. S. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-7776-2259-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cf. Gerhard Penzkofer: Postmoderne Lyrik. Poetry in Postmodernism Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, p. 7.
  2. See Wolfgang Welsch: Our postmodern modernity . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2008 p. 45.
  3. Cf. Wolfgang Welsch: What was postmodernism and what could become of it? In: Ingeborg flag, Romana Schneider (ed.): The revision of the postmodern. Post-Modernism Revisited Junius 2004, p. 33.
  4. See Klaus J. Milich: The early postmodern. History of a European-American cultural conflict Campus, Würzburg 1998, p. 153.
  5. Cf. Wolfgang Welsch: What was postmodernism and what could become of it? In: Ingeborg flag, Romana Schneider (ed.): The revision of the postmodern. Post-Modernism Revisited Junius 2004, p. 33.
  6. Cf. Christian Gruber: Literature, Culture, Quantum. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, p. 108.
  7. Cf. Alison Lewis: The new confusion. The poetry of Prenzlauer Berg. Between avant-garde, aestheticism and postmodernism . In: Henk Harbers (Hrsg.): Postmoderne literature in the German language. An Aesthetics of Resistance Vol. 49, Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta 2000, p. 275.
  8. ^ Cf. Gerhard Penzkofer: Postmoderne Lyrik. Poetry in Postmodernism Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, p. 7.
  9. Martin Klepper: Pynchon, Auster, DeLillo. American postmodernism between play and reconstruction . Campus, Frankfurt 1995, p. 58.
  10. Cf. Thomas Anz: The game is over? On the boom and the end of the "postmodern" game term . In: Henk Harbers (Hrsg.): Postmoderne literature in the German language. An Aesthetics of Resistance Vol. 49, Rodopi, Amsterdam and Atlanta 2000, p. 30.