Eng426 20th century english literature

Postmodernist Techniques

Postmodernists were concerned about the innovation and experimentation of the modernists which seems to be purposeless and regarded as a ‘literature of exhaustion’. As a result, a literature that will bridge the gap between modernist innovation and traditional or conventional form of writing was advocated for, a ‘literature of replenishment’. According to Jesse Matz, “at first, postmodernism seemed to mean the end of the modern novel, but ultimately it was a “replenishment”; at first it threatened an end to any faith in “representation” but ultimately it would turn out to solve many of the problems left unsolved by the modern novel... (128). This means of replenishing literature by combining the conventional art form and bringing in the modernist experimentation brings about the pastiche that postmodernists are known for.
Postmodernists made use of metanarratives, stories about stories and narrators who are concerned about the ways they narrate their stories and how their audience receives their stories. These narrators are mostly unreliable as their narratives are sometimes fraught with inconsistencies and they hide their true emotions or vital information till a particular time when their audience will believe their intentions or actions as well as their story.
Modernists, in trying to ascertain what reality is, probe into the thought and consciousness of their characters and made it seem that reality is knowable even if it is subjective and personal but the postmodernists are of the opinion that language mediates and constructs reality and as a result, the narratives of the postmodernists are open for questioning to ascertain if the stories are true and if the reality the story is trying to create was truly in existence before the story was ‘cooked’ up.
Postmodernists believed that literature or any other aesthetic work could not change the society as a result postmodernists turned their works into a parody, a playful way of dealing with the existential nature of human life. They viewed the modern world through a different lens and celebrated this situation. Their experimentation too was playful and it was mainly an art for art’s sake experimentation not really to redeem or change any situation. Part of this experimentation is the use of flashback and digression by narrators.