1. Postmodernism 1950’s-today
Multi Color Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe Museum of Modern Art

2. New Table Groups
New Table Groups

3. Backpack dump: What are the things you carry?
What categories and labels can you apply
Similarities across the whole group?
Individual?

4. The secret to understanding American Literature:
Every literary period is
a REACTION to the
period that came before it.

5. Literary movements PURITANS - early 1600’s- mid 1700’s
REVOLUTIONARY/AGE OF REASON
ROMANTICISM
TRANSCENDENTALISM
REALISM
THE MODERNS
POSTMODERNISM to present

6. Literary movements Genre/Style Effect/ Aspects Historical Context
PERIODS
Genre/Style
Effect/   Aspects
Historical Context
Examples
THE MODERNS
Novels
Plays
Poetry (a great resurgence after deaths of Whitman & Dickinson)
Highly experimental as writers seek a unique style
Use of interior monologue & stream of consciousness
In Pursuit of the American Dream--
*Admiration for America as land of Eden
*Optimism
*Importance of the Individual
Writers reflect the ideas of Darwin (survival of the fittest) and Karl Marx (how money and class structure control a nation)
Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century
Rise of the youth culture
WWI and WWII
Harlem Renaissance
Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
Poetry of Jeffers, Williams, Cummings, Frost, Eliot, Sandburg, Pound, Robinson, Stevens
Rand's Anthem
Short stories and novels of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Thurber, Welty, and Faulkner
Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun & Wright's Native Son (an outgrowth of Harlem Renaissance-- see below)
Miller's The Death of a Salesman (some consider Postmodern)
POSTMODERNISM
1950 to present
Note: Many critics extend this to present and merge with Contemporary -- see below)
Mixing of fantasy with nonfiction; blurs lines of reality for reader
No heroes
Concern with individual in isolation
Social issues as writers align with feminist & ethnic groups
Usually humorless
Narratives
Metafiction
Present tense
Magic realism
Erodes distinctions between classes of people
Insists that values are not permanent but only "local" or "historical"
Post-World War II prosperity
Media culture interprets values
Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and The Executioner's Song
Feminist & Social Issue poets: Plath, Rich, Sexton, Levertov, Baraka, Cleaver, Morrison, Walker & Giovanni
Miller's The Death of a Salesman & The Crucible (some consider Modern)
Lawrence & Lee's Inherit the Wind
Capote's In Cold Blood
Stories & novels of Vonnegut
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye
Beat Poets: Kerouac, Burroughs, & Ginsberg
Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

7. Postmodern Art
Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in modernism. Specific trends of modernism that are generally cited are formal purity, medium specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary tendency, i.e. the avant-garde.

8. Postmodernism General Definition
a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of “art.”

9. Postmodernism:
Reality is…
inaccessible by observation and fact and human understanding
what we make of it
unknowable

10. Postmodernism criticism

11. “House of Ancient Memory”
In Post-Modern art, there can be a pluralism of art styles.
Betye Saar is an African American artist who uses found objects in her mixed media artwork. This piece of artwork resembles an alter that one might find in folk art. Also, her artwork shows that there is no distinction between high and low art in Post-Modernism.
Artist: Betye Saar
Date: 1989
Medium: Sculpture, Sculptures
Size: Installed x x inches
Institution: Walker Art Center

12. “66-76-89” Postmodern art approaches include:
mixed media, appropriation, hybridization, layering, recontextualization, collaboration, and irony.
Artist: Nam June Paik Date: 1990 Medium: Mixed media, Media Arts, Multimedia Size: overall installed 148 x 64 x 48 inches Institution: Walker Art Center

13. “Sweeping Beauty”
Postmodernists feel modern beliefs have not led to a society free of oppression and poverty.
Postmodern artists often question and critique social inequities.
They are skeptical about modernism's focus on the individual.
Postmodern artists recognize that people's actions are affected by the social context.
In postmodern art, there is variety of expression.
Artist: Alison Saar Date: 1997 Medium: Prints, Edition Prints/Proofs Size: sheet 75 x 33 inches

14. untitled
There is a lack of concern for sensory experiences or the need for the mark of the individual.
In this piece, the focus is place more on ideas, rather than form or other visual qualities.
In postmodern art, there is also irreverence.
Artist: Jenny Holzer
Date: circa 1987
Medium: Sculpture, Models
Size: overall 15 x 18 inches
Institution: Walker Art Center

16. Postmodern Literature
Can be dream-like (Inception)
Often blurs lines between fiction and reality (Pan’s Labyrinth, Inglorious Basterds, The Things They Carried)
Defies definition

17. Postmodernism Definition Summary
Emphasize idealism, constructivism, relativism, pluralism and skepticism in its approaches to knowledge and understanding
Belief that apparent realities are only social constructs and are therefore subject to change
Opposed to use of sharp binary classifications (male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial)
Definitions Cont’d…

18. Definition Expansion - Tends to Emphasize:
Idealism: assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial; how human ideas — especially beliefs and values — shape society
Constructivism: deals with the way people create meaning of the world through a series of individual constructs. Constructs are the different types of filters we choose to place over our realities to change our reality from chaos to order.

19. Relativism: points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration. Definitely applies to morals.
Pluralism: denote a diversity of views, and stands in opposition to one single approach or method of interpretation.
Skepticism: any questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, or opinions/beliefs stated as facts.

20. Postmodern Common Techniques
Irony/playfulness/black humor
Intertextuality
Fragmentation
Pastiche
Metafiction
Maximalism
Minimalism
Temporal distortion
Fabulation
Poioumena
Historiographic metafiction
Magic realism
Technoculture
Hyperreality
Paranoia

21. Intertextuality
Shaping of texts' meanings by other texts, borrowing from other texts to create meaning
Ex:
Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
Ginsberg’s “Howl”

22. Writing about the process of writing
Metafiction
Writing about the process of writing
author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness
Ex:
The Things They Carried, Ambush & Spin (p29)

23. Combining different elements - imitation, celebratory parody Ex:
Pastiche
Combining different elements - imitation, celebratory parody
Ex:
poetry/stories of William S. Burroughs,
Kill Bill
30 Rock
AG’s “Howl”

24. Challenges traditional writing; role of narrator, magic, myth Ex:
Fabulation
Challenges traditional writing; role of narrator, magic, myth
Ex:
Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991)

25. Story about the process of writing; Challenges fiction and reality
Poioumena
Story about the process of writing; Challenges fiction and reality
Ex:
The Help
Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire

26. Historiographic metafiction
Fictionalize actual historical events or figures
Ex:
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

27. Themes are imaginary, fantastic, almost dream-like Ex:
Magic realism
Themes are imaginary, fantastic, almost dream-like
Ex:
Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories,
Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

28. Paranoia
Subjective nature of reality, can be manipulated. Story could be delusion of character
Ex:
Joseph Heller’s Catch-22
The Yellow Wallpaper (not postmodern though)

29. Maximalism and Minimalism
MAX: Digression, reference, and elaboration of detail occupy a great fraction of the text; covers everything
(more is more) – think excessive footnotes that engulf page (Consider the Lobster essay)
MIN: Surface description where readers are expected to take an active role in the creation of a story; author provides general context and reader uses imagination

30. Temporal distortion
Non-linear timeline, jumps backwards and forwards; historical reference might not be in the correct time period
Ex:
In the Time of Butterflies
TTTC
Chronicle of a Death Foretold