The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction ( Cambridge Introductions to Literature )

Publication series :Cambridge Introductions to Literature

Author: Bran Nicol  

Publisher: Cambridge University Press‎

Publication year: 2009

E-ISBN: 9780511636721

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780521861571

Subject: I106.4 Novels

Keyword: 作品评论和研究

Language: ENG

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The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction

Description

Postmodern fiction presents a challenge to the reader: instead of enjoying it passively, the reader has to work to understand its meanings, to think about what fiction is, and to question their own responses. Yet this very challenge makes postmodern writing so much fun to read and rewarding to study. Unlike most introductions to postmodernism and fiction, this book places the emphasis on literature rather than theory. It introduces the most prominent British and American novelists associated with postmodernism, from the 'pioneers', Beckett, Borges and Burroughs, to important post-war writers such as Pynchon, Carter, Atwood, Morrison, Gibson, Auster, DeLillo, and Ellis. Designed for students and clearly written, this Introduction explains the preoccupations, styles and techniques that unite postmodern authors. Their work is characterized by a self-reflexive acknowledgement of its status as fiction, and by the various ways in which it challenges readers to question common-sense and commonplace assumptions about literature.

Chapter

Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and 'the real’

Sociology and the construction of reality

Jameson and the crisis in historicity

Lyotard and the decline of the metanarrative

Irony and 'double-coding’

Chapter 1 Postmodern fiction: theory and practice

An incredulity towards realism

Realism and modernism

Postmodernism and the French nouveau roman

Where postmodern fiction begins

The fictional world is not like ours

Narrative is not 'natural’

Modernism, referentiality, and the avant-garde

What postmodern fiction does

Hutcheon and the 'double-coding’ of postmodern fiction

McHale's poetics of postmodernism

Metafiction

How to read postmodern fiction

Susan Sontag and the 'erotics’ of reading

Roland Barthes and the 'writerly’ text

'Paranoid reading’ and 'rhizomatic reading’

Chapter 2 Early postmodern fiction: Beckett, Borges, and Burroughs

Samuel Beckett

Jorge Luis Borges

William Burroughs

Chapter 3 US metafiction: Coover, Barth, Nabokov, Vonnegut, Pynchon

Barth's Funhouse and Coover's Descants

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Thomas Pynchon

Chapter 4 The postmodern historical novel: Fowles, Barnes, Swift

Historiographic metafiction

British historiographic metafiction

John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman

Graham Swift, Waterland

Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Chapter 5 Postmodern-postcolonial fiction

Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children

Toni Morrison, Beloved

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo

Chapter 6 Postmodern fiction by women: Carter, Atwood, Acker

Angela Carter

Margaret Atwood

Kathy Acker

Chapter 7 Two postmodern genres: cyberpunk and 'metaphysical’ detective fiction

Sci-fi and cyberpunk

William Gibson, Neuromancer

Detective fiction

Jorge Luis Borges, 'Death and the Compass’

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Paul Auster, City of Glass

Chapter 8 Fiction of the 'postmodern condition’: Ballard, DeLillo, Ellis

Conclusion: 'ficto-criticism’

J. G. Ballard, Crash

Don DeLillo, White Noise and Libra

Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

References

Index

Cambridge Introductions to . . .

Authors

Topics

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