1. What are the main features of postmodernism?

Incredulity towards
metanarratives

The end of reality, Postmodern society is multicultural and incoherent:

Rejection of metanarratives Postmodernity is deconstruction: Derrida’s
post-structuralism:, Postmodern social identity is constructed by
images, The Death of the Author”:, The transformation of Marxism in
postmodernity: Farewell to class war: Goodbye to systemic approach:
Why does postmodernism argue that reality and truth are constructed
concepts? Because its access and representation are mediated by
language and ideology. Language is as social contract, everything that is
presented and thus received through language is already loaded with
meaning inherent in the conceptual patterns of the speaker’s culture.
2. What does the term “metafictional” mean? Novels that involve a
significant degree of self consciousness about their fictional nature., they
are fictions about fiction itself.
3. Why has classical realism been accused of ideological control ? On
account of its claims to determine what is natural, normal and neutral.
4. “We are all of us, directly or indirectly, caught up in a great
whirlwind of change”, wrote Doris Lessing in 1957. Despite the key role
Britain had played in the war, it was no longer an empire, and its political
status in the world had changed accordingly. It would take quite long to
come to terms with the fact of its international decline. In fact, the swift
process of decolonization, accelerating in the fifties and sixties, drove
Britain by 1960 into a deepening confusion about its imperial identity and
role as a world power. Meanwhile, the Welfare State and the growth in
number of British universities throughout the country were opening up
the range of educational and job opportunities for young people from
small towns and particularly for women. Yet, despite increasing
consumer affluence, the early sixties were pervaded by a pessimistic
mood of decline. There was a general sense of national enervation and
bewilderment at the fast-rising crime rate, football hooliganism, severe
industrial unrest, continuous crises in the pound, race riots and political
scandals (Waugh 1995: 59). The counter-cultural movement of the sixties
which reached its climax with the student’s protests in the late sixties
marked the end of a commitment to a universal culture characterised by
“a consensually validated High Art. consumer liberation from post-war
austerity; cultural liberation from leisure-class values; sexual liberation
from Victorian mores; and a celebration and making of the new, of youth,
technology, design and fashion” (HS, 10).
Absurdism, Gothic, the grotesque, extremism, the theatre of cruelty, the
poetry of diminished expectation, apocalyptic fantasy and self-reflexivity are
some of the literary modes development.

5. -What does the term “postmodernism” mean? How can it be defined

in general terms? A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to
literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary
criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the
assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In
essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in
 human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to
understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason,
postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid
for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the
relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding,
interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our
interpretations of what the world means to us individually.
Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles,
knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will
necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.
Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any
ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific,
philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for
everybody - a characterisitic of the so-called "modern" mind.
6. -How is the access to truth perceived in postmodernism? According
to postmodernism, apparent realities are only social constructs and
thereby these are not static but subject to change. It emphatically
believes that for the formation of ideas and belief, the role of language,
power, relations and motivations are immense. It does not believe any
absolute truth. Rather it believes that reality is plural relative and
dependent. The description of reality is dependent on the persons and
their nature who describe it. Moreover, the description of the world is
dependent on the persons who perceive it and thus this description is
subjective
7. -How does Fredric Jameson understand postmodernism? Sees it as
a cultural dominant, characterized by the results of late capitalist
dissolution of bourgeois hegemony and the development of mass culture.
8. -What do the concepts “metanarratives” or “grandnarratives”
signify? What does Lyotard mean when he asserts that “incredulity
toward metanarratives” is the central characteristic of
postmodernism? they are those doctrines or systems that need not
legitimation because they are themselves self legitimating. They not only
explain a certain domain of knowledge, but they legitimate the power and
social relations deriving from it. So the various stories about human
emancipation and progress, such as the enlightment or Marxism, that
once served to ground knowledge and legitimate certain politics, are no
longer credible.
9. -According to Linda Hutcheon, what role does language play in the
configuration of postmodernism? Language is as social contract,
everything that is presented and thus received through language is
already loaded with meaning inherent in the conceptual patterns of the
speaker’s culture

-Which are the most significant differences between modernism and

postmodernism? How have they been reflected in the context of English
literature? Modernism

Modernism relates to a sequence of cultural movements that happened in the

late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. They included reforming
developments in architecture, art, music, literature, and applied techniques.
Modernism flourished between 860s and 1940s; preferably till 1945 when World
War II ended. During that time, a lot of importance was given to literary works.
Also, this movement paid a lot of significance to original works, such as
paintings, sculpture, architecture, and poetry. In fact, during this time original art
was considered a primary creation.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism describes a broad movement that developed in the late 20th-century and
focused on philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism which marked a departure
from modernism. In fact, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of
skepticism, irony or rejection towards ideologies and various tenets of universalism,
which included objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, among
others. Moreover, this movement is associated with schools of thought such as
deconstruction and poststructuralism.
Modernism Postmodernism
Adheres to Western Contests Western
hegemonic values hegemonic values
Focus on the writer Focus on the reader
Focus on interiority Focus on exteriority
Alienation Collective voices
Unreliable narrator Ironic narrator
Ambivalence towards
Rejection of realism
realism
Literature is self- Literature is open and
contained intertextual
Mixing of high- and low-
High-brow genres
brow genres
Rejection of literary Parody of literary
conventions conventions
Metafictional Metafictional
Idiosyncratic language Simple language

10. -What are the main characteristics of postmodernist literature?

Suspicion, scepticism, rejection of many of the theories and values of
modernism. Fragmentation and multiple, conflicting identities along with
alternatives to established values. It challenges the established artistic
criteria. Desconstructing established beliefs and purporting new
interpretations. Reality only comes through the interpretations of what the
 world means to us individually. It is constructed as the mind tries to
understand its own particular and personal reality.
11. -Explain why Patricia Waugh affirms that “the question of value in
literature orindeed the very constitution of English literature [has
become] problematic For Patricia Waugh, “simply in geographical
terms, ‘English literature’ is difficult to identify. Not only
is it now to be distinguished from ‘literatures in English’, but the United
Kingdom itself is a complex historical composite of different nations and
peoples” In a way, 1948 has come to signal the symbolic beginning of Black
British history. In that year the Nationality Act was passed, encouraging
immigration from British colonies and former colonies. Four hundred and
ninety two West Indian immigrants disembarked. Although the category
“black” initially demarcated a
unified front against what would become an increasingly explicit racialised
white national community, it has metamorphosed and “since the mid-1980s
there has been a growing attention to its potential as both a political and
aesthetic signifier, characterised by difference and alterity