Topic summary
Postmodern literature
Postmodern literature is a genre of literature characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reference, and intertextuality (literature building upon or reimagining other literature), and which often presents both historical and political themes. As a style of experimental literature, it emerged strongly in the United States in the 1960s through the writings of authors such as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Philip K. Dick, Kathy Acker, and John Barth. Beginning within or alongside the counterculture of the 1960s, postmodernists often challenge authorities and the status quo. This inspiration is, among other things, seen through how postmodern literature is highly self-reflexive about the political issues it speaks to.
Precursors to postmodern literature include Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605–1615), Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760–1767), James Hogg's Private Memoires and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), but postmodern literature was particularly prominent in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 21st century, American literature still features a strong current of postmodern writing, like the postironicDave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad (2011). These works also further develop the postmodern form.
Sometimes the term "postmodernism" is used to discuss many different things ranging from architecture to historical theory to philosophy and film. Because of this fact, several people distinguish between several forms of postmodernism and thus suggest that there are three forms of postmodernism: (1) Postmodernity is understood as a historical period from the mid-1960s to the present, which is different from the (2) theoretical postmodernism, which encompasses the theories developed by thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and others, and (3) "cultural postmodernism", which includes film, literature, visual arts, etc. that feature postmodern elements. Postmodern literature is, in this sense, part of cultural postmodernism.