Postmodern Literature Essays (Examples)

Postmodern Literature Final

In terms of the use of experimental techniques in the assigned readings this semester, I think I would judge Vonnegut to be the best and Ishmael Reed to be the worst. The simple criterion here is accessibility. There is no reason why experimental writing should be difficult or a chore to read. The constant emphasis on a surface level of linguistic novelty in Ishmael Reed makes the actual reading experience difficult. For example, we might consider a sentence like "A place without gurus monarchs leaders cops tax collectors jails matriarchs patriarchs and all the other galoots who in cahoots have made the earth a pile of human bones under the feet of wolves." This is the narrator's description of the town of Yellow Back Radio (itself already a frustratingly unrealistic name for a town) and the experimental quality of the sentence here gets in the way of…

The second half, entitled "Airborne Toxic Event, however, serves the role of criticizing the reality of American society and the result of its obsession with consumerism. In the second half, a chemical spill releases a mysterious airborne toxic event over Jack's home area, requiring everyone to evacuate. This event forces Jack to confront his own mortality and society's general fear of death and how it attempts to prevent death through chemical cures which in fact may ultimately cause death. In the book, Jack actually buys Dylar, a drug that promises to cure the fear of death.

Even the title White Noise is symbolic of the distortion of the truth and the end of the American Dream. It summarizes the novel's message that such obsessions as consumerism, media saturation, faux intellectualism, conspiracies have all led to the disintegration of American society by making it impossible for an individual to discover their…

" (Hendricks) Truth and culture are therefore seen to be created and destroyed by others for their own ends.

In conclusion, the three literary works discussed above are in many respects very different but also indicate certain continuities of intention and discourse between romanticism, modernism and postmodernism. What links them all is the search for reality and truth that exists beneath the facade of everyday life and reality. As we progress from the romantics to modernism we find that the literature becomes more open to the interrogation and questioning of certain suppositions. The acceptance of human nature as innately good is put into doubt by the modernist view of the contemporary wasteland which we find in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. This doubt and questioning is extended in postmodernism, and in Things Fall Apart, where all assumptions about the underlying order and certainty of existence are disturbed and "…the center cannot…

Religion features prominently as a theme in literature. In fact, some of the earliest works of literature are rooted in their religious and cultural traditions, including the ancient literatures of the Middle East and Mesopotamia.

As the role of religion in society changed, so too did the role of religion in literature.

Modern literature, including work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, often offers scathing critiques of religion, whereas postmodern literature allows religion to play a more complex role in shaping individual identity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's he Scarlett Letter heavily criticizes the role of religion in a patriarchal society, whereas Yann Martel's Life of Pi presents religion more as a subjective phenomenon, revealing an important cultural shift from religion to spirituality.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's he Scarlett Letter, the author shows how religion becomes a tool of social oppression and political control.

A. Hawthorne shows that religious authorities are hypocritical, and especially fundamentalists, as the…

Postmodern Book: Proposal

Colson hitehead's John Henry Days explores the relationship between fact and fiction with a postmodern narrative structure. One of the characteristics of postmodernism is the way in which it destabilizes what constitutes 'the known.' John Henry, according to American legend, was an African-American man who challenged a steel engine in a contest of who could work the hardest. Henry won, but died in the attempt. The saga of Henry is paralleled with that of a contemporary, young African-American journalist named J. Sutter, who seems to be everything the Henry of legend was not. Sutter is a dilettante journalist who puts little effort into anything, other than finagling free food at press events. However, like Henry, he is struggling with the changes in his profession in the new technological revolution.

The novel fluidly draws associations between the mythic past and present. Just as Henry's era struggled in terms…

Postmodern

The term 'Post modernism' has emerged as a real area of academic study only from the middle of the 1980's onwards. It is a complicated and a complex term, quite difficult to define exactly, and the reason for this is the fact that the term post modernism appears not only in art but also in various other forms of functioning like for example, in architecture, sociology, in literature, in the sciences, and in fashions, and in technology as well. It can even be stated that it is not very clear when exactly post modernism begins. Some researchers opine that the best way to start thinking about post modernism is by starting with modernism, and this is the movement from which the subsequent post modernism movement has stemmed. Modernism has two important facets, both of which must be understood clearly before beginning the attempt to understand post modernism. (Postmodernism)

Therefore,…

Jean-Francois Lyotard (the Postmodern condition: A Knowledge eport 1979) describes postmodernism in the context of nature of social bond. He argues that due to the advent of the technology and with the invention of computer, information has been more restricted in the form of procedures and program. According to him some one must have access to all the information to check whether the decisions are madder correctly. He discuss in this paper about the language games which are gaining importance day by day as the communication is becoming so prominent and efficient. We can see the connecting point between Lyotard and Kuhn as well as Popper which also agree that truth is language dependent and textual interpretation vary from person to person so whole truth of knowledge is not absolutely conveyed.

PESONAL EACTION and CITIQUE:

Postmodernism seems to be overwhelmingly push everything into vagueness. The only thing according to postmodernism…

Cold War dominated American culture, consciousness, politics and policy for most of the 20th century. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which symbolized the fall of the Iron Curtain and therefore finale of the Cold War, Cold War rhetoric and politics continued especially in the War on Terror. Depictions of the Cold War in American literature and film parallel the changes that took place in American ways of thinking about its own domestic policies as well as American perceptions of the alien enemy or "Other." Tracing the evolution of American film and literature from the end of World War Two until the 1980s reveals trends in thought. Early depictions of the Cold War were modernist in their approach, with clear distinctions between good and evil and no moral ambiguity whatsoever. Clear delineations between right/wrong and good/evil prevailed, a form of political propaganda and even brainwashing that prepped the…

Counselling Theories

Postmodern and Family System Theory Approach

There have been significant interest in research on the problems of addiction; hence, the many scientific studies on the issue. Many of the studies in this area end up with the same conclusions; the concept of addiction is complicated. The complexity partly arises from the effect it has on the drug abuser from different perspectives such as psychological, social, biological, and the impacts of addiction on social law, economics and politics. On the other hand, psychologists perceive drug addiction as a disease. From a religious worldview, addiction is a sin. Therefore, it is possible to view addiction from a medical, behavioral, and spiritual angle. As stated, the concept of addiction is complex, and there are many definitions of addiction reflecting the complexity of the phenomenon (Sremac, 2010).

Notably, all the definitions of addiction portray a negative judgment on addiction, but owing to…

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson [...] importance of trees in the novel. While this novel chronicles the life of Isobel Fairfax, trees form the very roots of the novel, just as they form the root of all existence. Trees endure long after people have lived and died, as this novel clearly shows. Trees have also played a vital role in life since the very beginnings of time, as this novel illustrates. Trees are as much a part of life as breathing, and in this novel, they form the setting for some magical circumstances and fairy-tale qualities.

Throughout this quirky novel, the author refers to trees, and the importance they play in our lives. In fact, she even equates the heroine, Isobel, to a tree. She writes, "My body a trunk, my feet taproots, my toes probing like pale little moles through the dark soil. My head a crown of leaves…

pervasive philosophies behind many postmodern forms of art and literature is the idea that human identities are defined more by their social circumstances than by any universal truths. The human is not a self-sufficient entity, but is built through social conventions. This notion reveals itself in the transitional postmodern works by Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov -- specifically, in Lolita and aiting for Godot. Humbert is continually attempting to reconcile his life as a suave intellectual with his hidden life as a pedophilic rapist. One way in which he does this is to call himself a "therapist"; which is an acceptable label for one of his faces, but also identifies him more subtly as "the rapist." This duel nature reflects the social limitations imposed upon his freedom, and the consequences they have for both his identity and his actions. Vladimir and Estragon encounter a different aspect of this philosophy: they…

Postmodern Bereavement Theory

Bereavement is a universal observable fact as every human being experiences the loss of a loved one at some point in his/her life. However, every individual experiences it in a unique way. It is, without a doubt, an undeniable truth that to be human is to grieve. The passing away of a loved one can be difficult, irresistible and dreadful for any normal individual. When people are faced with such overwhelming situations, a majority of them especially the older adults get into the habit of enduring their loss with time. On the other hand, to forget and live without a loved one is not as easy for some individuals. It becomes difficult for these people to cope up with the grief-stricken situations as they experience a grief of greater concentration or time (Hansson & Stroebe, 2007). There are a number of theorists who have put forwarded their…

1. Samuel Taylor Coleridge relies on rich multisensory imagery to achieve poetic goals in “Kubla Khan.” The sensory imagery Coleridge uses anchors the poem within the genre of Romanticism, as the poet evokes an idealized past based on the descriptions of the mythic Xanadu. Phrases like “stately pleasure-dome” (Stanza 1, line 2) also add evocative sexual imagery that coincides well with the imagery of the splendor of the natural world, with lines like “deep romantic chasm,” (Stanza 2, line 1). In “Kubla Khan,” Coleridge uses multisensory imagery to juxtapose light and darkness, femininity and masculinity, civilization and savagery, to induce a dreamlike effect.

In keeping with the Romantic era tropes, Coleridge relies heavily on nature imagery. Each stanza is filled with references to nature, such as the “incense-bearing tree,” and the “sunless sea,” in Stanza 1. Stanza 2 continues to evolve the imagery of the natural world, only now Coleridge…

A teen might be asked to tell their own story from the point-of-view of other people they know, looking at themselves from other viewpoints. These clients are freed to invent stories and play parts in that serve the purpose of providing a framework of meaning and direction for themselves. The stories are never singled out as "true" or "false," but a recognition that truth is complex and no one story can encompass all of the truth aids the client in seeing him or herself as a complex and meaningful role-player. And in that context, since one story may not be claimed to be the whole truth, no one story may not dominate a person's life. Life, to the client and narrator of these "stories" becomes an adventure in which trials are meant to be overcome and designed to prepare one for the future, rather than to defeat. The religious story…

Music, Art, Literature Trends

From impressionism to pop art, jazz to hip hop, science fiction to beat poetry, artistic, musical, and literary expressions have varied considerably between 1870 and 2005. The period between the end of the nineteenth century to the current day can be generally described as the modern and postmodern eras. The beginning of the modern era, during the final decades of the nineteenth century, coincided with the Industrial evolution. Along with fascination with modern technology and optimism for the future came simultaneous disillusionment. However, modern technological advancements have made such widespread creativity possible. Social and political trends have also influenced creative endeavors, and vice-versa. Art, music, and literature are more accessible and more possible to create than they ever were in the past. The modern era has been characterized by an overall flourishing of the expressive arts, but some trends have a more lasting significance than others.…

Consumers in Virtual orlds

Literature Review / Theoretical Framework: The article in the journal Marketing Intelligence & Planning points to how marketing research is becoming more pivotal to companies due to increased global competition (globalization). The authors point out that because some firms struggle to re-invent the way they conduct marketing research in the new millennium, they are considered "learning organizations" (Malhotra, et al., 2001, p. 216).

The article presents important practical information about how firms should conduct research. For example, qualitative research should be conducted with a "postmodern" approach, which uses "artistic interpretation" methods and rejects the old way of doing things like sending out surveys to determine what consumers prefer. Updated qualitative research uses computer-assisted data and embraces creative methods. On the quantitative research side, the authors advocate automated "data mining"; new databases should contain unlimited information about foreign product markets (Malhotra, 221).

Key Findings: Conducting surveys is…

Yarbrough quotes Ihab Hassan, who describes postmodernism as the "literature of silence" in that it "communicates only with itself," a reference that initially astounds the rational mind. Then, reading further in Yarbrough, Hassan is quoted as saying the term postmodernism applies to "a world caught between fragments and wholes, terror and totalitarianism of every kind."

In Vonnegut's novel, characters reflect the deconstruction of American society in the 1950s, during the period of paranoia dominated by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy's fascist-like search for "communist sympathizers," which created terror and loathing and reflected how morally shallow yet potent the hammer of temporary totalitarian authority can be.

On page 96, Chapter 44, it is revealed that Horlick Minton had once been fired by the State Department for allegedly being "soft on communism" - but the only "real evidence" used to justify his dismissal, his wife announced, was a letter she wrote to the…

Crime in Literature and Film

"Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris and "Manhunter" by Michael Mann

The original version of the novel red dragon was written by Thomas Harris in 1981. In the words of est, only few authors have risen to the level of relevance and success as Thomas Harris, who authored just five novels, beginning from 1975. The Red Dragon, with other fictional works in the same series, is a famous fictional book built around a crime thriller. The book was later adapted in the 1986 Michael Mann movie, Manhunter. Some key actors that played key roles in these movie series are Brain Cox, the first ever actor to play the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the manhunter antagonist, who became the Red Dragon's protagonist. However, some other actors like Anthony Hopkins in the movie, the Silence of the Lamb and Red Dragon, Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen and Hannibal Rising's…

" James a.S. McPeek

further blames Jonson for this corruption: "No one can read this dainty song to Celia without feeling that Jonson is indecorous in putting it in the mouth of such a thoroughgoing scoundrel as Volpone."

Shelburne

asserts that the usual view of Jonson's use of the Catullan poem is distorted by an insufficient understanding of Catullus' carmina, which comes from critics' willingness to adhere to a conventional -- yet incorrect and incomplete -- reading of the love poem. hen Jonson created his adaptation of carmina 5, there was only one other complete translation in English of a poem by Catullus. That translation is believed to have been Sir Philip Sidney's rendering of poem 70 in Certain Sonnets, however, it was not published until 1598.

This means that Jonson's knowledge of the poem must have come from the Latin text printed in C. Val. Catulli, Albii, Tibulli, Sex.…

Thomas Pynchon, Bleeding Edge

One hallmark of postmodern literature is a willingness to mingle high and low registers, and to subvert popular and recognizable genres of literature with material that might seem foreign or that frustrates customary expectations. By any standard, Thomas Pynchon is one of America's pre-eminent postmodern novelists, and his 2013 novel Bleeding Edge follows both of these customary procedures. I hope to demonstrate that Pynchon's purpose in Bleeding Edge is twofold: he is engaged in "historical fiction," but of a peculiar sort -- writing about the very recent past, in a novel that covers the events of September 11, 2001 -- and he is also writing a postmodern detective novel. In both ways, Pynchon is able to indulge a crucial theme which critics have identified as being central to his work as a whole: the idea of paranoia.

On the surface, Bleeding Edge would appear to be…

) Talking It Over has also been adapted for the stage, appearing in Chicago and Slovenia; a stage version of Arthur & George recently closed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Criticism:

Barnes' work has often been criticized for its abstract formal nature, in which essays, lexical material, chronology, encyclopedia entries, and other nominally non-fictional genres are brought to bear as support for a central story. These auxiliary techniques are sometimes dismissed as "contrivances" of postmodern literature that render his books outside the novelistic realm:

"Barnes writes books which look like novels and get shelved as novels but which, when you open them up, are something else altogether. Flaubert's Parrot was for the most part a set of studies of Flaubert and his parrot. His new book, A History of the orld in 10-1/2 Chapters, is even odder. The 10 chapters contain 10 quite different stories, some factual, some not. They…

Truman Show is unequivocally a postmodern text. The only facet of this production that makes it slightly less unconventionally postmodern is the fact that it is a movie instead of a dedicated work of literature. Still, there are several critical aspects of the plot of this movie that render it postmodern. At its core, postmodernism is about wildly different associations that are jumbled together and which work, somehow. There are also temporal displacements and aspects of reality that are similarly obfuscated. The Truman Show incorporates virtually all of these elements in its plot, which proves that this film is definitely a postmodern text.

One of the ways that The Truman Show indicates that it actually is a study of postmodern literature is in the basic premise of the plot itself, which certainly reinforces this notion. This movie is actually a movie in which there are people who are watching the…

Human emotions and values are detached and unreal in this work, as well. Pynchon paints vivid pictures of the characters, but they are all flawed, somehow. Oedipa is married to a disc jockey junkie, Dr. Hilarius is a psycho afraid of Nazi retribution, the Paranoids really are paranoid, Metzger disappears, and Pierce Inverarity is a dead jokester who may be having the last laugh on Oedipa. The characters, like society, are flawed, and Pynchon portrays them with warped emotions and values as a caustic commentary on modern society in general. In addition, their values and emotions are questionable, as well. Many are detached even from themselves, and others, like Oedipa; seem to read far too much into many situations.

In conclusion, these works are the epitome of postmodernist literature. Convoluted, contrary, inner conscious and full of imagery and social commentary, they are funny and a bit depressing at the same…

First, evil in Sleepy Hollow is more equating with a satirical view that, in this case, evil is a more benign humor, bumbling, caustic in disrupting the town, and, as it was in Ancient Greek and oman drama, simply more of an irritant than planned destruction. Focusing again on the time period, our first introduction to this theme is one of Dutch New York against Urban New England. The Dutch community is sylvan, nostalgically conceived, changeless, and an Eden for its inhabitants. Ichabod arrives as a Yankee whose spoiling of this Eden simply cannot be tolerated -- and even more, by marrying the daughter of a wealthy and high-ranking community member, becoming part of Eden himself. This simply could not happen to a community that is so "European in nature."

Sleepy Hollow, as a town is clearly Dutch, with Dutch values, culture, and mores, or for riving, "population, manners, and…

" (Gibbs 226) Alvardo de Campos is a naval engineer by profession and while his earlier writings are positive, his work develops characteristics of existential angst. Furthermore, what is intriguing is that all of these fictive authors created by Pessoa interact with one another and even translate each other's works. (Gibbs 226)

One critic notes that "Fernando Pessoa invented at least 72 fictive identities. "His jostling aliases...expressed his belief that the individual subject -- the core of European thought -- is an illusion." (Gray 52) This view goes to the heart of the matter, as will be discussed in the following sections of this paper; namely that the creation of these fictive identities emphasizes and highlights the modern crisis of identity and the existential and postmodern view that the self as a coherent and continuous entity is an illusion. The following extract emphasizes this central point and also allows for…

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes [...] justify the book as a postmodern novel. "Nightwood" is a postmodern novel in every respect, from the stream-of-consciousness style of writing to the underlying sexual and homosexual themes that could only exist in postmodern writing of the twentieth century. "Nightwood" is unique, compelling, and disturbing all at the same time, yet it is difficult for the reader to put down. While it has been long touted as a classic lesbian novel, Barnes herself fought this label, wishing it only to be remembered as a classic postmodern work, not a sexually motivated treatise on women who love women.

Author Djuna Barnes was born in 1892 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York. Her mother was a violinist, and her father was a farmer and painter. Her parents instilled a love of the arts early in her life, and her father's free-spirited enthusiasm also greatly influenced her and her work.…

This author used them to see how Kurt Vonnegut is post-modernist.

Barry begins in number one by asking how authors discover postmodernist themes and attitudes. In the observation, postmodernists foreground fiction which might be said to exemplify the notion of the 'disappearance of the real' in which shifting postmodern identities are seen. For number three, there is use of parody, pastiche and allusion. For number four, there is foreground irony for number five narcissism. For number six, the distinction between the high and low cultures is challenged and highlighted in the texts in which they work as hybrid blends of the two.

In other words, Barry maintains that taking the action out of the "real world" and into an imaginary one that creates and facilitates the postmodern. This would explain the convergence in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five of so many seemingly contradictory elements, from the violence of war to sexual…

And perhaps worst of all are books like Chicken Soup for the Soul, which are usually given as graduation gifts or gifts given to a person undergoing a difficult emotional crisis, again more like one would give a greeting card than a book full of information.

But Twitchell's other point, that the publishing industry must maintain a clear sense of high culture and guide rather than respond to America's tastes, is more controversial than his suggestion that the book world should re-focus its attention on reading rather than simply selling printed matter. Although some of the best sellers Twitchell despises, like works by Danielle Steel or Steven King, may be without merit one might ask -- has he ever read the cultural critiques found within the pages of a Calvin and Hobbes comic? Why speak of the quality of Salmon Rushdie in the same breath as Steel and King --…

Eternal Child

Adults tend not to take the truly important things seriously. This is as terrible a flaw in the adult world as the fact that adults also take much of what is actually unimportant far too seriously. This is one of the central themes of Peter Pan, for the boy who never wants to grow up might well reconsider his attraction to eternal juvenescence if adults managed to retain more of their childlike features. For while Peter Pan is certainly childish in a number of ways, he is embodies the best qualities of childhood. And one of those best qualities of childhood is the ability of children to take the telling of stories very seriously.

Adults far too often dismiss stories as mere whimsy, simply entertainment, something that has nothing to do with anything in the "real world." And adults are especially prone to dismiss the importance of children's…

Muriel, the third and youngest generation only speaks English; she didn't grow up with a Japanese mentality because her parents did their best to leave their cultural heritage behind and assimilate the new culture.

Through Naoe's eyes, immigration is viewed as a curse, a much unwelcome event that has forced her to estrange from Japan. Not only that doesn't she like the new country, she would make no effort to integrate herself within the community. Despite the fact that she herself admits she can understand and speak English, she stubbornly refuses to communicate in other language than Japanese. "I speak my words, speak my words, and I say them all out loud. I yell and sing and mutter and weep from my seat of power. I could speak the other [English] [...], but my lips refuse and my tongue swells in revolt."

The eighty-year-old woman is more upset since her…

Filmmakers From Two Different Eras Used to Portray Subjects and Ideas

The focus of the research in this study is the techniques utilized by filmmakers from the classical and 'New Hollywood' eras of filmmaking. Towards this end, this study will examine the literature in this areas of inquiry.

Classical Hollywood Cinema & Narrative

The work of David ordell (nd) examines classical Hollywood cinema and states that there are three views of narrative that are distinct from one another in that a narrative can be "studied as representation, how it refers to or signifies a world or body of ideas" and he states this could be referred to as 'semantics' of narrative which is exampled in the majority of studies on characterization or realism. As well a narrative can be viewed as a structure in the way its "components combine to create a distinctive whole." (ordwell, nd, p. 17)

Narrative can…

Poe and Fowles

Detective stories and novels were first created in the 1800s. eaders continue to enjoy them. Even today, 150 years later, millions of people across the world want to read the newest detective books. Many people call Edgar Allen Poe the inventor of the detective story, because he developed a formula that is still followed. An example is his "Murders in the ue Morgue." Many authors later created their own style. John Fowles' "The Enigma" shows one way that a writer can experiment with the crime story. This paper will compare and contrast these two works to explain Poe's formula and to show how it was altered by Fowles, to let the reader have more freedom of choice.

"The Murders in the ue Morgue" was story was so different from others that were popular at the time that Poe's usual publishers did not want to print it. Instead…

Eat, Pray, Love

Into the Wild

Motorcycle Diaries

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Theories/ Frameworks

epresentation from Media Studies -- Culture and its elevance

Post Modernism Literature

Thematic Analysis

Importance of Culture in Analysis

Theory and Methodology

Thematic Analysis -- Framework

Thematic analysis is appropriate for the following situations

Detective and inductive approaches

Analysis of two different phased of data

Thematic Process

Analysis and Process of Comparing Literary Works of Post-Modern Period

Post Modernism Writers

Post Modern Literary Theory

A person's personal, work, and family life and how they relate to nature all define how well the person knows himself. This article will explore how one comes of age and life stages by comparing three movies and three novels. The books are Motorcycle Diaries (Che Guevara), Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Cheryl Strayed) and Into the Wild (John Krakauer). The…

The first comes with the name of the main character, Oedipa, a play on the famous Oedipus. Part of Oedipus's destiny is related to his capacity to solve several mysteries, which is also what Oedipa has to do. Some of the names the author uses are simple plays on the sound of the respective name. Such is the case with Pierce Inverarity, but also Genghis Cohen. Many of the names are a simple instrument of satire, such as Dr. Hilarius.

The novel ends in a similar postmodern knowledge tension. As Oedipa becomes more and more lonely, there are different clues pointing out that the entire plot may in fact have been a joke played on her by Pierce Inverarity. As she attends the auction, she is hopeful that by learning who the bidder is, she will find the main key in understanding what Tristero is. The hope that is build…

Reading The Sound and the Fury can be frustrating for the reader, particularly the reader who is used to the linear march of time and the orderly unfolding of the events. Classic chronology provides a sense of order and a sense of time for the reader. They can easily relate to their own experience and concept of the passage of time. Faulkner steps into an uncomfortable area for many readers, making his work difficult to follow in terms of linearity. It appears as if he is randomly leaping off in different directions with no sense of purpose or direction at time. However, if we look at the way in which time acts as a character one can glean a different perspective of time and gain a glimpse into the eternal nature of time. Jean-Paul Sartre explains that, "A fictional technique always relates back to the novelist's metaphysics" (Sartre). Such is…

Hyperrealism in Literature

The following criticism was made by Michael izza on Don DeLillo's Libra:

In Libra, Don DeLillo offers solace for the issue of achieving historical certainty; however, despite rendering fictive order to historical confusions, the attempt to describe events, like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, has been complicated by him, through transferring individual agency to external forces. ejecting these forces' caricatures by astrology, paranoia and conspiracy, he lets characters makes decisions (izza 2008). Nevertheless, independent actions, apparently initiated by characters, become a system's products, while design springs from and in spite of individual intentions. Though chaos and system theories help shed light on the conjunction of determinism and randomness, the individual is incorporated in the global. Moreover, the unstable identity of Oswald is performative; he performs for a changing audience, which dictates every new act.

While the above critique has its views, I would agree with it.…

Barth, LITY)

Hello, my name is Fadi Awwad. Apologies for the late submission -- for some reason the due date was not showing on my Blackboard! The most recent book I read that really subverted the concept of Freytag's Triangle was probably The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. In the spring semester 2014, I wrote a research paper on Pynchon for a course on postmodern narrative here at UHV. Pynchon is considered the postmodern novelist par excellence, so it is no surprise that The Crying of Lot 49 subverts traditional narrative structure.

Pynchon's short novel tells the story of a California housewife, Mrs. Oedipa Maas, who is given the duty of being executor for the estate of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, who has just died. The central plot of the novel, however, hinges on whether Oedipa has inadvertently discovered the existence of a vast conspiracy called "The Trystero"…

Clarence and Alabama are capable of finding some sense of mirrored self in the eyes and common quest provided by relationship with another, and it is worth remembering that identity is serious business in "True Romance," serious enough to kill over, as in the film's perhaps most famous dialogue sequence, where Christopher alken assassinates a man whom he believes has impugned the identity of Sicilians.

Thus, the protagonists of "True Romance" are more successful than the protagonists of "Badlands." They are not simply more successful as outlaws, but as human beings. They win their quest for fulfillment, money, and excitement because they are able to work together, and are a more functioning romantic and criminal team together. Although togetherness provides the psychic fuel of the meaningless murders of "Badlands," the generation of the Kit and Holly couple is not really a couple at all. The two never connect, and their…

Salinger is an American literary treasure, best known for his novella Catcher in the ye. However, Catcher in the ye is but one of many in the canon of Salinger works. Salinger's short stories have recently garnered renewed attention because several unpublished Salinger stories were leaked online in November of 2013, three years after the author's death (uncie, 2013). Salinger died a recluse, and a man of mystery who was as much an American antihero as Holden Caulfield of Catcher in the ye. There have been numerous cultural allusions of Salinger's iconic novel and its quintessentially postmodern protagonist. Although no film has ever been made directly from the story of Catcher in the ye, Morgan (2010) points out that there have been allusions to Salinger stories in films like The Collector (1965) and Six Degrees of Separation (1993). Additionally, a 2013 documentary film about J.D. Salinger promises to reveal the…

Malone dies just as he finally does away with the alternate identities of his storytelling, such that he can be seen as 'becoming Malone' at the same moment of Malone's death, so that his death forces the reader to recall the beginning of the story and the Malone already in existence there, restarting the narrative loop.

In effect, Malone's storytelling creates an infinitely looping continuity that diminishes the finality of his death, because 'although the physical body will eventually die, we cannot be sure that consciousness discontinues,' and in fact, the novel seems to suggest that Malone's consciousness never ultimately discontinues, but rather briefly goes dark before being reactivated once again at the beginning of the novel (hite, 2009, 45). The tragedy, of course, is that Malone is entirely unequipped to deal with this kind of torturous immortality, so his mind is frayed and confused, with different characters and moments…

Literary realism, of course, focuses on the everyday cultural experience of everyday people who may, within their banal experience, do extraordinary things. The Postmodern movement, as a reaction to a number of 20th century trends, tends to be anti-establishment and looks for meanings hidden in the text, those meanings needing to be exposed and reflected through deconstructing that text (Perkins & Perkins, 2008).But what of the authors who tend to combine both genres -- those who are slightly anti-establishment, allow for deep contextual symbolism, but also find wonder in the everyday? Fortunately, that genre, and the combination of realism and postmodernism, has blossomed globally into a genre called magical realism. For the contemporary reader, magical realism is a genre in which magical, or some would say illogical, scenarios and events appear in a normal setting. The power of this genre seems to be the juxtaposition of the two elements --…

" However, as strange as these ideas may be to a modern reader or historian, that is all the more reason to demand the rigorous perspective demanded by Cohen. If objectivity is impossible, then looking at historical events from as many interpretations as possible provides a potential solution.

Cohen's embrace of folklore, and of piecing together a patchwork quilt of perspectives is useful in unpacking the influence of people outside of the ruling class, and exposing hidden influences upon Chinese history in terms of the impact of the religion of ordinary people, particularly women, denied an education or access to the centers of power. However, even for a historian outside of the field of East sian studies, Cohen's ideas are useful in terms of how to approach history, particularly historical events that have become especially fraught with meaning in modern culture, beyond their immediate impact. Cohen is most sure-footed when…

Gothic Fiction

Dracula is a far more traditional Gothic novel in the classic sense than the four books of the Twilight series, in which Bella Swan and her vampire lover Edward Cullen never even fully consummate their relationship until they are married in the third book Eclipse, and Bella does not finally get her wish to become a vampire until the fourth and final book Breaking Dawn. Far from being Edward's victim, or used as a pawn and discarded, she is eager to leave her dull, empty middle class life behind and become part of the Cullen vampire family. When she nearly dies giving birth to their half-vampire daughter, Edward finally does 'turn' her to save her life, and to paraphrase the title of the old song, we can only hope that she is satisfied. Bella in fact is a very traditional and conservative character, including her religion and even…

Freak Show

In "From Stage to Page: Franz Kafka, Djuna Barnes, and Modernism's Freak Fictions," Blyn argues, "we can find direct links between Kafka's and Barnes's notoriously opaque fictions and the premier low culture form of their era, the freak show or display of human curiosities," (135). Moreover, the authors' respective engagement with the trope of the freak show serves a distinct political motive: to subvert modernist aesthetics and to ironically predict the twisted horrors of fascism and Nazism. Written prior to the emergence of fascism and Nazism on the world stage, Kafka's body of work and Barnes's too seem prescient in light of their mocking the carnevalesque. Central to Blyn's argument is an understanding of the difference between the carnival and the freak show. The freak show was, for one, a side attraction at a carnival and thus deviant even within the spectacle of the carnival. The freak show…

career - how do his late stories differ from his early stories?

AYMOND CAVE'S WOK

aymond Carver wrote from the time he was a young man until his death at 50 in 1988. He wrote of his own experiences as an alcoholic, young father, and blue-collar worker. His writing was always classified as postmodern, however, as with most authors, his writing changed from his early work to his later works. "The surfaces of Carver's stories look calm and banal, but especially his portrayals of marriage problems are full of emotional tension, hidden memories, wounds, longing, hate, anxiety, and melancholy" (Liukkonen).

One of the contrasts between Carver's earlier works and his later works is in the minute detail of eating. In "The Idea," Carver's characters use eating as a substitute for communication, especially with those who they should be the most intimate. In "Cathedral" the baker tells the couple whose son…

Hours

In her novel "Mrs. Dalloway," Virginia Woolf demonstrated a distinctly modern style as she revealed the dynamics of perception rather than simply writing another "conventional" story, like many other writers of her time. Michael Cunningham, in a tribute to Wolff, took her story and modified her modern style with his own unique writing in "The Hours."

Cunningham played with Woolf's writing styles in his novel, intensifying her clever style. For example, Woolf had an unusual method of making her characters experience backward launches of memories, which were usually sparked by some type of image. In addition, she would jumble time and place to show her readers the reality of human consciousness and experience. Cunningham mimicked her style in "The Hours" yet added to the excitement with his postmodern styles. Therefore, while Woolf's plot was simple, Cunningham's was decidedly complex.

In his introductory statement, Cunningham discusses Woolf, hinting that she…

Mark Leyner

Hey-I know this looks long, but it's about 1200 words without the two long quotations from the book.

So it's actually the right length according to the assignment, but you might want to mention that to the instructor.

A selection from Mark Leyner's 1995 work Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog is included by the editors of the Norton Anthology Postmodern American Fiction, although Leyner himself claims in a note in the anthology that his "work isn't animated by a desire to be experimental or post-modernist or aesthetically subversive or even 'innovative' -- it is animated by a desire to craft a kind of writing that is at every single moment exhilarating for the reader, where each phrase, each sentence is an event." (Geyh, Leebron, & Levy 242). As a result the entirety of Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog holds up as a kind of aesthetic whole…

Apart from taking an authoritative role in the Symposium, many people consider her to be behind the doubts of her existence. She passes her wisdom to Socrates who in turn passes it to his many friends. She distinguishes the difference that existed between good and beautiful in the context of love. She emphasizes the significance of the object of love even in beauty and birth.

Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

The story presents a penetration of the surface of the anarchy of life that does not guarantee a divine moral pattern. Instead, the outcome is a cycle of terror. The Duchess are yet to conquer the horror to realize spiritual victory. My first encounters with the book Duchess of Malfi was through the course CL/EN2051: English Literature Before 1800. The Duchess of Malfi takes place during the 16th Century at the Duchess' palace in Italy. Ferdinand and the Cardinal…

The panopticon centralizes the space of the observer while simultaneously mystifying the act of observation, such that the threat may be ever-present even if an actual prison guard is not. In the same way, Foucault's conception of the societal panopticon imposes its standards on the individual, who must conform to the standards of society due to a fear of the possibility of discovery and punishment. According to Foucault, "the Panopticon is a privileged place for experiments on men, and for analyzing with complete certainty the transformations that may be obtained from them" (Foucault 204). The space the narrator finds himself in at the beginning of The Unnamable functions in this same way, except that in this case the object of the panopticon's gaze has not undergone the process of subjectification prior to finding itself there.

The narrator simply exists upon the reading of the novel, and is subsequently unable to…

Postcolonial Theory on Imperialism

The Strains of Living in a Postcolonial orld

In the wake of Colonialism and Imperialism, much of the world still finds itself in pieces -- unable to remember life before being conquered. hat has resulted is great turmoil in many areas of the world caused by a confusion of cultural identity and a complete lack of national identity. Yet, this move to revive individual cultures has also set off a sharp debate within the field of postcolonial theory; these cultures become protective blankets which then keep nations separated in their own twisted visions. Conquerors such as the United States and Great Britain continue on this bravado of the superior nations who still power over their former colonies. This then results in estern literature romanticizing the East as to reaffirm those chauvinistic beliefs. Thus, the conquered people face a crucial internal dilemma -- adoption into what the…

Marriage and Marital Relationships according to Octavia Butler and Alejo Carpentier

Literature has functioned, over time, as the 'reflector' of the social realities that people experience in society. Works of literature chronicle, narrate, and illustrate to readers a particular social reality, as perceived and/or experienced by the writer. In literature, we as readers experience a subjective point-of-view of what life is like in a particular period or era. Indeed, literature allows society to appreciate and get to know the arduous, yet interesting, history of humanity.

In the works of Octavia Butler and Alejo Carpentier, readers witness the truth behind the assertion stated above: through Butler's "Kindred" and Carpentier's "The Lost Steps," the social issue of women subjugation or empowerment through marriage becomes the central theme. In this paper, a discussion is presented to show that both Butler's and Carpentier's portrayal of their female protagonists in their respective novels project the…

Italo Cavino

Historians differ on the origin of tarot cards. Most believe that Egypt was the first to use similar images and symbols. Tarot is also represented from the early Greek, oman, Norse and Indian cultures to the Italian and French medieval courts. The first clear reference to tarot is based on an Italian sermon from about 1500 A.D. (Pratesi). egardless of origination, it is agreed that many civilizations -- ancient to modern -- have commonly used the tarot to divine the future. It is not unusual, then, to see references of these cards in literature. Writers integrate it into their plot; poets use it as imagery. Italo Calvino's Castle of Crossed Destinies provides an excellent example of tarot not only used within the plot, but as a narrative metaphor. He weaves his narration around a group of medieval travelers staying at a castle who find themselves incapable of speaking.…

Candide

In his signature work Candide, French author Voltaire offers an extensive criticism of seventeenth and eighteenth-century social, cultural, and political realities. Aiming the brunt of his satirical attack on the elite strata of society, Voltaire simultaneously criticizes some liberal Enlightenment philosophies. Voltaire mocks the authority of both Church and State, showing the corruption inherent in each. Similarly, the novel points out the insipid arrogance of the aristocracy, especially via his relationship with the Baron and his family, all of whom except for his beloved Cunegonde remain farcically nameless throughout the novel. Although Voltaire sympathizes with the core values of Enlightenment thought such as social justice, reason, and egalitarianism, his novel demonstrates disappointment with the distortion of those values. Excess optimism, represented clearly by Pangloss, and excess pessimism, represented by Martin, are portrayed as the two impractical extremes of Enlightenment values in Candide. Furthermore, while Voltaire appreciates the burgeoning rationalism…

ork Cited

Antony and Cleopatra. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/cleopatra/full.html

Brown, Lenora Inez. "Enter the Body: omen and Representation on Shakespeare's Stage." American Theatre. May 01, 2001. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library eb site.

Desmet, Christy. "omen's Matters: Politics, Gender, and Nation in Shakespeare's Early History Plays." Comparative Drama. September 22, 2000. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library eb site.

Hunt, Maurice. "Shakespeare's Venetian paradigm: stereotyping and Sadism in The Merchant of Venice and Othello." Papers on Language & Literature. March 22, 2003. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from HighBeam Research Library eb site.

Julius Caesar, The Life and Death of. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/julius_caesar/full.html

Othello, The Moore of Venice. Retrieved September 30, 2005 from:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/othello/full.html

Starks, Lisa S. "Like the lover's pinch, which hurts and is desired: The Narrative

of Male Masochism and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra." Literature and Psychology. December 22,…

Magical Realism in Ana Castillo's 'So Far From God'

hen looking for the magical realism in Ana Castillo's So Far From God, and for those readers who know her work and her cultural background, one of the ways in which the author employs magical realism is as a skilled fiction writer. Castillo is writing about Latinos, a family of women. Her first step in employing magical realism is to set aside the Latino patriarchal cultural restrictions that would otherwise prevent the concept of "magical realism" from working in the story. Castillo had to find a way to overcome that allowed the reality to be used to advance the story past that obstacle. She also had the obstacle of Latino Catholicism, which is as equal a force with which to be confronted as is the patriarchal society. This essay is an examination of how Ana Castillo overcomes these obstacles in her…

Proust and Narrativity

We read Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time - that greatest work of his the title of which is more commonly translated as Remembrance of Things Past both because of the simple beauty of his language and because of the power that he has to find our own lost pieces of time. For while he makes us interested in his past because of his marvelous descriptions of his own childhood and we become entranced by his memories because of the elegant and lush way that he conveys them to us, we also read the book because it seems to offer to us a type of magic, seems to serve as a talisman to all pasts, not just his alone. This paper examines the narrative structure of In Search of Lost Time and the ways in which that structure, joined to Proust's language and symbolism, can help…

So he does just that, and does just that. he story is telling for a number of reasons. First it speaks to a particularly kind of sickness in the American consumer, in which he was would rather pay some price and feel he is cheating the system by getting a bargain, than take some for free and get the same value for no cost. Also, the father and the son curse a lot. his is interesting because it shows the father and son have an open and interesting relationship, and that the son is learning from his dad as he watches his dad work a con to get people to take something for a price that he would rather just give them. his suggests that the next generation will grow up even wilier about such cons, and the American consumer society will be worse for the wear.

While JDP's story…

"In eloved, Morrison allows the reader to share the legacy of slavery as the characters Sethe, Paul D, and Denver attempt to make a new life in freedom. However, they cannot put the past, lived in slavery, behind them; they must reveal it to themselves, to each other, and to the reader in 'digestible pieces.'" (Nigro) The traumatic events which were experienced by slaves cannot be wiped clean, and the past will continue to have an effect on the future. Today, the concept of post-traumatic stress disorder -- the psychological consequences of experiencing traumatic events -- would perhaps be identified in Morrison's characters. (Feldspar) Nightmares, flashbacks, irritability, emotional detachment, and other distress are common symptoms, and certainly experienced by Sethe and others in eloved, all of which are a kind of continued mental slavery.

In addition to freedom being a myth because of legal and psychological reasons, there are also…

hero? Does it depend on whether one is a man or a woman? Is the nature of heroism engendered? Are there different categories of heroism - a heroism of the mind and a heroism of the body, for example? The life and work of the novelist Jean Rhys help us to understand the nature of the heroic. Rhys herself may be considered to be a hero even though her life was not by conventional means a success. Indeed, it might be considered to be a stereotypical failure: She drank heavily, had a number of unhappy love affairs, and seems to have lost her talent or at least her will to write for decades. But in the end. A woman who called herself a "doormat in a world of boots" proved by her life and in her work that doormats are durable indeed.

Rhys's sense of herself as a certainly less-then-conventional-heroic…

Mass Culture and Popular Culture and Studying Bestsellers Books

This paper takes into account the differences in the best sellers written in the 1980's and in the 1990's. It also focuses on the themes of the best sellers from the two decades and what makes them appealing to the society.

Mass culture and popular culture and studying bestsellers books

In this day and age, books are being written with a motive to inculcate motives, teaching the readers a lesson every time they open the book.

Good books always serve as a constructive way to provoke idle thoughts. Women started writing as a profession back in the early 1800's. They started off writing articles for magazines, containing information on fashion, science, household tips, and covering other domestic issues. These magazines trained every woman with the proper code of etiquette, style and manner of dressing nicely even motivated women from the lower…