Module Information

Currently a buzz word, everything appears to be 'postmodern': the clothes you wear, the houses in which we live and the culture with which we engage. This option will focus on the theories and practices of postmodernism.

• To what does the 'post' refer?
• How is it (un)connected to modernism?
• What are the ramifications for literary practice?
• Framing the device, the death of the author, the destructible text, the unwriting of the text: what have we learned from such techniques?
• In what sense has self-reflexiveness made the writing of fiction more interesting and perhaps even more potent?
• To what extent have the interrogations of self-reflexivity liberated the novel from certain obsolete conventions?

The module will focus principally on literary examples of postmodernism, but attention will also be paid to other areas of cultural practice, such as film, visual art, and architecture. The seminar pattern will follow a series of thematic interests, which centre upon the characteristic features of postmodern practice, as well as considering some of the theoretical essays of the principal exponents of postmodern theory.

_PROGRAMME

Seminar 1: Theories of Postmodernism
Extracts from Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition

Seminar 2: The Novel Undone
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

Seminar 3: Deconstructing Fiction
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

Seminar 4: Poetry in the Age of Electronic Reproduction
Extracts from American L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Poets: Susan Howe, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, Bob Perelman, Charles Bernstein

Seminar 5: Postmodern Thought Experiments
Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr Y

Seminar 6: Postmodern Identities
Winterson, The Powerbook

Seminar 7: Architecture and Urbanicity
Charles Jencks, The Emergent Rules; Robert Venturi, The Duck and the Decorated Shed; Paolo Portoghesi, Postmodern

Seminar 8: Other Worlds
William Gibson, Neuromancer

Seminar 9: Magic Realism
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Seminar 10: Postmodern and Film
Discussion of various postmodern films, including Blade Runner, The Matrix, A Cock and Bull Story, The Draughtsmans's Contract

_Bibliographies

There is currently a vast proliferation of texts and studies of postmodernism and its various impacts upon spheres of our society. There is a good selection of the principal texts in the Hugh Owen Library (and this is well supplemented by texts in the National Library). Additional bibliographies concerning individual writers will be compiled and given to students on a weekly basis. The Hugh Owen Library has large holdings on most of the authors represented on this course (including writers not mentioned but nevertheless prominent in postmodern culture).