1. Postmodern and Contemporary Literature

2. Definition of Postmodernism
There is no one definition. It is easier to classify this as a philosophy/literary criticism rather than a true movement.
a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a countermovement from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationships between ideas. Postmodernism encourages the use of elements from historical styles to create satire, illusion, decoration, and complexity.

3. Origins
It overlapped with Modernism for the purpose of this class we will classify the origin as 1945—the year WWII ended.
Influenced by modernist writers such as: Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot.
It peaked in the 1960s and 1970s.
There is a debate over whether postmodernism has ended, or if we are still in the postmodern era.
Contemporary literature—like postmodern literature, the answer depends on who you ask.

4. Use
Serves to dispute, reverse, mock, or reject modernist ideas and social constructs.
For example:
Good vs. Evil
Male vs. Female
Power
Beauty
Race

5. Characteristics Authorial self- reference/Reader involvement
Dark humor/dark satire
Faction
Fragmentation
Hyperreality

6. Characteristics
Intertextuality-there are two relationships going on whenever we read a text: between us and the author (the horizontal axis) and between the text and other texts (the vertical axis). It's the vertical axis that gives us our definition of intertextuality
Magical Realism-a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy.
Metafiction- fiction in which the author self-consciously questions the relationship between reality and fiction.
Maximalism –more is more
Minimalism- less is more
Historiographic metafiction

7. Characteristics
Paradox-a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.
Paranoia-suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification.
Parody-deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
Pastiche-the taking of various ideas from previous writings and pasting them together to make new styles.

8. Characteristics
Temporal Distortion- uses a nonlinear timeline; the author may jump forwards or backwards in time, or there may be cultural and historical references that do not fit.
Unrealistic plots
Unreliable narrators

9. Authors and Works: Simone de Beauvoir- The Feminine Mystique
David Foster Wallace- The Broom of the System / Infinite Jest
Kurt Vonnegut- Cat's Cradle/ Slaughter- house Five
Thomas Pynchon- V. / The Crying of Lot 49
Margaret Atwood- The Handmaid's Tale
Salman Rushdie- Shalimar the Clown / Midnight's Children
Samuel Beckett- Waiting for Godot
James Joyce- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Finnegan's Wake
Toni Morrison- Beloved/ Recitatif
Tim O'Brien- Ambush/The Things They Carried
Joseph Heller-Catch-22
Orhan Pamuk-Snow
Flannery O'Connor- A Good Man is Hard to Find (The Life you Save May be Your Own)
J.D. Salinger- Cather in the Rye
Chuck Palahniuk-Fight Club
Joanna Russ- Why Women Can't Write

10. Leonid Afremov

11. Andy Warhol

12. Roy Lichtenstein

13. Banksy

14. Robert Rauschenberg