POST MODERNISM

· The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain characteristics of post–World War II literature, relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators.

· Unifying features often coincide with Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the "metanarrative" and "little narrative", Jacques Derrida's concept of "play", and Jean Baudrillard's "simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest.

Jean Francois Lyotard

Lyotard's work is characterised by a persistent opposition to universals, he is fiercely critical of many of the 'universalist' claims of the Enlightenment, and several of his works serve to undermine the fundamental principles that generate these broad claims.

Lyotard was a frequent writer on aesthetic matters. He was, despite his reputation as a postmodernist, a great promoter of modernist art. Lyotard saw 'postmodernism' as a latent tendency within thought throughout time and not a narrowly-limited historical period. He favoured the startling and perplexing works of the high modernist avant-garde. In them he found a demonstration of the limits of our conceptuality, a valuable lesson for anyone too imbued with Enlightenment confidence. Lyotard has written extensively also on few contemporary artists of his choice: Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha Ettinger and Barnett Newman, as well as on Paul Cézanne and Wassily Kandinsky.

· Kurt Vonnegut is a well known Post modernist author, with his works winning fame after they were published in 1969. The classic combines science fiction elements with an analysis of human condition. The novel is based on Kurt Vonnegut's own experience in World War II. Slaughterhouse Five treats one of the most horrific massacres in European history, the firebombing of Dresden.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States. Kurt Vonnegut used humour to tackle the basic questions of human existence.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 964