ENG 346 - Postmodern American Literature: Abstracting the Center

Postmodern fiction undermines the linear sequences of cause and effect that we find in traditional fictions. It often defies normal logic, and since language is built on grammatical logic” a subject, a verb, the action upon an object” how can we ever get a grip on what appears to be non-rational, random and unprecedented? How do structure and styles change to accommodate this new perspective? How can we wrestle with the unknowability and inaccessibility of other people and ourselves? This class will take on these questions and the larger problem of postmodernism by examining the ways in which the formative fictional and theoretical voices of early postmodernism challenged authority and its historical consciousness while also ratifying its centrality to our ideological understanding of the world. Following on from this, we will examine how contemporary writers and theorists have adapted postmodern conventions to continue to abstract the center and sharpen postmodernism’s political concerns in ways unrealized by its earlier progenitors. We will read works from writers such as Pynchon, Auster, Didion, Whitehead, Yu, and Orange.

Credits 4

Compass Attributes
Humanities